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THE  MORMON  SAINTS 


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THE 

Mormon  Saints 


THE  STORY  OF  JOSEPH  SMITH,  HIS 

GOLDEN  BIBLE,    AND  THE 

CHURCH  HE  FOUNDED 

BY 
GEORGE  SEIBEL 


PITTSBURGH 

THE  LESSING  COMPANY 

1919 


Copyright,  1919,  by 
THE  LESSING  COMPANY 


BANCROFT 
LIBRARY 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  Page 

I.  AN  AMERICAN  ISLAM 7 

II.  "Jos  SMITH,  PROPHET"  14 

III.  THE  BOOK  OF  MORMON 24 

IV.  BIRTH  OF  A  NEW  RELIGION 37 

V.  NAUVOO  THE  BEAUTIFUL 47 

VI.  To  THE  PROMISED  LAND 53 

VII.  MORMON  BELIEFS  AND  PRACTICES 60 

VIII.  THE  MORMON  WAR 70 

IX.  IN  SOLOMON'S  FOOTSTEPS 76 

X.  SCHEMING  FOR  STATEHOOD 85 

XI.  ACTS  OF  THE  APOSTLES 92 

XII.  WHAT  WILL  BE  THE  END  ? 99 


5  It  is  often  and  truly  said,  that 
past  ages  were  pre-eminently 
credulous,  as  compared  with  our 
own;  yet  the  difference  is  not  so 
much  in  the  amount  of  the  ere- 
dulity,  as  in  the  direction  which 
it  takes.  Men  are  always  pre- 
pared to  accept,  on  very  slight 
evidence,  what  they  believe  to  be 
exceedingly  probable. 

— Lecky. 


The  Mormon  Saints 
CHAPTER  I 


An  American  Islam 

THE  history  of  the  Mormon  church 
forms  one  of  the  strangest  and  most 
startling  chapters  in  the  annals  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century.  The  French 
philosopher  Salverte  has  said  that  man  is 
credulous  because  he  is  naturally  sincere. 
Yet  it  seems  almost  beyond  belief  that  such 
a  crude  farrago  of  superstition,  if  not 
fraud,  as  Mormonism  could  be  brought 
forth  by  the  most  enlightened  age  of  the 
world,  an  age  in  which  science  has  worked 
her  greatest  marvels  and  culture  has  been 
diffused  over  all  lands.  Buddha,  Krish- 
na, Mithra,  Apollonius,  and  other  demi- 
gods who  founded  miraculous  religions, 
belong  to  the  remote  past  and  to  distant 
climes.  We  flatter  ourselves  that  their 
revelations  prospered  because  they  came 
long  ago  and  far  away.  But  Mormonism 
arose  almost  yesterday,  amid  universities 
and  libraries,  as  if  to  prove  that  man  is 
the  same  in  all  ages — as  if  to  demonstrate 
the  truth  of  what  Gregory  Nazianzen 


8  MORMON    SAINTS 

wrote  to  St.  Jerome:  "A  little  jargon  is 
all  that  is  necessary  to  impose  on  the 
people.  The  less  they  comprehend,  the 
more  they  admire. " 

Almost  a  century  has  passed,  and  the 
followers  of  Mormon  are  still  among  us — 
and  while  missionary  societies  are  sending 
abroad  thousands  of  men  and  millions  of 
money  to  bring  the  heathen  unto  Christ,  a 
terrible  canker  has  attacked  the  heart  of 
Christianity  at  home.  Mormon  apostles 
are  swarming  through  the  land,  sowing 
their  doctrine  broadcast.  Most  amazing 
of  all  is  the  fact  that  they  are  meeting  with 
success,  and  while  many  orthodox  denomi- 
nations complain  of  stagnation  and  de- 
cline, the  church  of  the  Latter-Day  Saints 
is  forging  steadily  ahead,  gaining  ground 
in  fashion  marvelous. 

It  will  be  the  aim  of  these  pages  to  in- 
quire into  the  origin  of  that  church — a 
hierarchy,  rather;  to  trace  the  Cagliostro- 
like  career  of  its  founder,  and  its  rise  un- 
to power  despite  intelligent  opposition  and 
shameful  persecution;  to  examine  its 
"supernatural  revelation'7  by  the  higher 
criticism  of  common  sense ;  finally,  to  con- 
sider whether  its  institutions  are  antagon- 
istic to  those  laws  upon  which  rests  the 
well-being  of  the  nation  and  of  society — 
and,  if  they  are,  to  suggest  a  remedy. 

The  purpose  ever  kept  in  view  will  be 


AN  AMERICAN  ISLAM  9 

to  weigh,  not  blindly  to  condemn.  To 
enumerate  the  sources  drawn  upon  and  the 
authorities  consulted  would  needlessly  en- 
cumber the  account;  the  wonder  tales  of 
Mormon  writers  and  the  rabid  concoctions 
of  their  foes  have  alike  been  cautiously 
sifted.  Nought  is  set  down  in  malice— 
though  the  historian  expressly  reserves 
the  right  to  smile  at  human  folly  where 
he  finds  it. 

The  peculiar  people  who  colonized  the 
valley  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake  have  many 
admirable  qualities  commending  them  to 
favor;  the  impartial  historian  may  not 
shut  his  eyes  to  these.  Perhaps  these 
virtues  are  more  to  be  feared  than  their 
vices.  For,  if  the  beliefs,  doctrines,  and 
practices  of  the  Mormons  are  dangerous  to 
society,  there  is  reason  for  the  gravest  ap- 
prehension, and  need  of  the  most  ener- 
getic measures  to  render  them  harmless. 
Truly  marvelous  has  been  the  spread  of 
the  Mormon  faith.  Joseph  Smith  in  1827 
proclaimed  his  discovery  of  the  golden 
plates  whereon  was  inscribed  the  Book  of 
Mormon.  Three  years  later  the  first 
church  was  organized  with  six  members; 
to-day,  after  less  than  a  century,  the 
Mormon  faith  numbers  nearly  half  a  mil- 
lion adherents.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
Christianity  had  gained  that  number  of 
converts  by  the  end  of  its  first  century. 


10  MORMON    SAINTS 

There  is  no  parallel  to  the  successes  of 
Mormonism  except  in  those  of  Islam, 
which  it  resembles  in  many  other  respects. 
Like  the  religion  of  Mahomet,  it  claims  to 
supplement  and  supplant  Christianity — to 
be  a  second  thought  of  God,  with  the  im- 
plication that  second  thoughts  are  best. 
Like  Mahometanism,  it  has  a  special  reve- 
lation, committed  to  its  founder  by  an 
angel  from  heaven.  Like  Mahometanism, 
it  is  extremely  practical  and  not  at  all  mys- 
tical: it  fills  the  flesh-pots  of  the  faithful 
and  enjoins  no  strenuous  asceticism. 
Like  Mahometanism,  it  believed  in  the 
missionary  potency  of  the  sword.  One 
of  the  earliest  writers  upon  the  subject 
styled  Joseph  Smith  the  American  Maho- 
met— a  comparison  which  in  no  way  vio- 
lates the  truth  of  history,  save  that  the 
camel-driver  and  prophet  of  Mecca  was 
probably  a  sincere  fanatic,  whereas  the 
seer  of  Palmyra  was  more  likely  a  cun- 
ning impostor. 

This  excrescence  of  Christianity  has 
steadily  grown  at  a  rate  faster  than  the 
nation.  The  advance  guard  which  entered 
Utah  in  1847  numbered  only  148;  to-day 
Utah,  excepting  Salt  Lake  City  and  Ogden, 
is  overwhelmingly  Mormon,  and  the 
church  to  a  great  extent  holds  the  balance 
of  political  power  in  the  adjoining  states — 
Idaho,  Colorado,  Wyoming,  Nevada,  Mon- 


AN  AMERICAN  ISLAM  11 

tana,  Arizona,  and  New  Mexico.  It  rules 
absolutely  over  a  region  as  large  as  the 
combined  area  of  New  York  and  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  is  a  potent  factor  in  every  part 
of  the  great  West.  It  sends  its  elders — • 
missionaries  in  the  apostolic  sense,  with- 
out " purse  or  scrip"— to  Mexico,  to  the 
republics  of  Central  and  South  America, 
to  the  islands  of  the  Pacific,  to  Australia, 
to  India,  to  the  Cape  Colony  and  the 
Transvaal,  to  Turkey,  Russia,  Germany, 
Switzerland,  Denmark,  Sweden,  even  to 
England.  They  overrun  the  Southern 
states  and  the  Northwest,  and  boast  that 
they  gained  over  sixty  thousand  converts 
during  one  year  alone — more  than  any 
other  religious  denomination  in  the  United 
States  during  the  same  period.  The  Mor- 
mons outnumber  many  sects  that  make  a 
great  deal  more  noise.  An  idea  of  their 
strength  may  be  gained  from  the  fact  that 
they  are  almost  as  numerous  as  the  ad- 
herents of  the  great  and  respected  Episco- 
palian Church. 

Counterfeiting  humility  when  it  served 
their  purpose,  they  have  never  failed  to 
display  an  overweening  arrogance  when  in 
power.  When  they  attained  statehood  for 
Utah,  they  paralyzed  the  arm  of  Federal 
jurisdiction.  Then  the  meek  mask  was 
thrown  off,  and  offensive  usages  sanction- 
ed by  the  church  were  again  openly  prac- 


12  MORMON    SAINTS 

ticed  and  brazenly  defended.  Judges  and 
juries  in  Utah  were  under  their  thumb, 
and  even  those  who  were  not  for  them 
dared  not  pronounce  against  them,  or  at 
best  connived  at  grave  misdemeanors  by 
imposing  trifling  fines  upon  Saints  that 
happened  to  get  caught.  They  even  went 
to  the  extent  of  electing  to  the  United 
States  Congress  a  notorious  and  self-con- 
fessed violator  of  the  state  law  against 
polygamy — virtually  saying  to  the  nation : 
"What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?" 
And  to-day,  through  Senator  Eeed  Smoot, 
they  are  influential  in  all  caucuses  and 
councils  of  the  powerful  Eepublican  fac- 
tion. 

There  is  a  tremendous  truth  in  the 
words  which  Mark  Twain,  that  philoso- 
pher who  put  on  the  mask  of  a  humorist, 
uttered  through  his  Connecticut  Yankee  in 
King  Arthur's  Court :  "I  was  afraid  of  a 
united  church;  it  makes  a  mighty  power, 
the  mightiest  conceivable,  and  then  when 
it  by  and  by  gets  into  selfish  hands,  as  it 
is  always  bound  to  do,  it  means  death  to 
human  liberty  and  paralysis  to  human 
thought." 

There  are  sects  which  proclaim  insani- 
ties more  iniquitous  than  the  tenets  of  the 
"Saints" — but  they  lack  the  peculiar  vi- 
tality of  Mormonism  and  hence  are  com- 
paratively harmless.  They  have  their 


AN  AMERICAN  ISLAM  13 

day,  and  are  forgotten,  but  Mormonism  is 
spreading  both  as  a  religious  body  and  a 
political  force.  To  the  elements  of  danger 
already  indicated  there  is  joined  the  mili- 
tant spirit  of  the  theocracy.  It  has  not 
hesitated  at  violence  and  bloodshed  to 
maintain  itself.  Wherever  the  Mormons 
have  gone,  their  presence  has  often  en- 
gendered civil  strife.  They  form  a  state 
within  the  state — they  submit  to  the  gov- 
ernment, but  do  not  acquiesce  in  it.  What 
manifestation  of  implacable  hostility— 
never  effaced — could  be  plainer  than  the 
flags  of  Salt  Lake  City  flying  at  half-mast 
on  the  Fourth  of  July,  the  nation's  birth- 
day? The  country  has  had  several  Mor- 
mon wars — and,  as  one  historian  put  it, 
after  the  lapse  of  half  a  century  the  prob- 
lem "has  not  yet  yielded  to  the  force  of 
logic  or  the  logic  of  force. ' ' 


14  MORMON    SAINTS 


CHAPTEE  II 


" Joe  Smith,  Prophet" 

"Ye  shall  know  them  by  their  fruits," 
says  Scripture,  and  adds:  "Do  men  gather 
grapes  of  thorns,  or  figs  of  thistles?" 
Whether  we  judge  Joseph  Smith  by  Mor- 
monism,  or  that  faith  by  its  founder,  the 
result  is  very  much  the  same.  But  an 
inquiry  into  the  Prophet's  antecedents  and 
character  will  be  found  instructive  as  a 
commentary  upon  the  gullibility  of  man- 
kind. There  have  been  many  false  pro- 
phets, religious  quacks,  high-priests  of 
humbug,  from  Simon  Magus  to  Teed  the 
Koresh.  None  has  gained  power  over 
his  dupes  so  easily;  none  has  exploited 
their  credulity  for  his  own  profit  with 
greater  impudence;  none  has  erected  a 
"religion"  more  transparent  than  that 
system  of  lunacy  and  lechery  foisted  upon 
his  followers  by  the  Scotch- Yankee  Mes- 
siah of  Mormonism. 

Joe  Smith  was  born  December  23,  1805, 
at  Sharon,  Vermont.  The  threadbare 
phrase  must  be  reversed  in  his  case — he 
came  "of  poor  but  disreputable  parents. " 
They  removed  to  Palmyra,  New  York,  in 


"JOE   SMITH,   PROPHET"  16 

1815,  Joseph  Smith  senior  having  in- 
fringed upon  the  government  monopoly  of 
"making  money,"  and  escaped  punish- 
ment only  by  turning  state's  evidence. 
In  Palmyra,  the  pursuits  of  the  family — 
Joe  was  the  fourth  of  nine  children — rang- 
ed from  the  prosaic  peddling  of  rootbeer 
to  fortune-telling  and  digging  for  buried 
treasure.  Many  good  people  pointed  the 
finger  of  scorn  and  suspicion  at  them, 
while  chicken-coops  and  smoke-houses 
were  watched  with  special  vigilance  as  a 
result  of  nocturnal  raids.  They  were  an 
illiterate,  shiftless,  whiskey-drinking  tribe 
—and  Joseph  was  not  least  among  them 
in  laziness  and  other  evil  propensities. 
But  he  was  a  "genus,"  as  his  father  used 
to  say;  he  could  with  utmost  solemnity 
utter  the  most  palpable  untruths,  he  was 
fertile  in  schemes  of  every  kind,  and  was 
an  omnivorous  reader  of  the  "buckets  of 
blood"  literature  extant  in  that  day.  His 
favorite  books  in  his  youth  were  the  Life  of 
Stephen  Burroughs,  a  religious  impostor 
whom  he  seems  to  have  chosen  for  a  pa- 
tron saint,  and  the  Life  of  Captain  Kidd, 
whose  career  he  could  not  well  emulate, 
being  far  from  the  sea,  but  whose  buried 
treasures,  dreamed  of  and  diligently  dug 
for,  may  have  been  the  germ  of  the 
"Golden  Bible"  discovered  in  Mormon 
Hill.  And  we  further  learn  that  poetry, 


16  MORMON    SAINTS 

as  well  as  biography,  had  charms  for  Jo- 
seph, his  favorite  stanza  being — 

"My  name  was  Robert  Kidd, 

As  I  sailed,  as  I  sailed, 
And  most  wickedly  I  did, 
God's  laws  I  did  forbid, 

As  I  sailed,  as  I  sailed." 

Blood-and-thunder  literature  was  not  as 
plentiful  nor  as  cheap  then  as  it  is  now, 
or  Joe  might  never  have  opened  the  Bible ; 
as  it  was,  he  later  became  quite  familiar 
with  parts  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
and  the  fanciful  stories  he  invented  be- 
gan to  take  on  a  religious  cast.  The  mor- 
bidly superstitious  nature  of  his  mother, 
who  believed  in  dreams  and  saw  visions, 
also  must  have  influenced  him  greatly. 

With  the  aid  of  a  curious  piece  of  quartz, 
found  while  digging  a  well,  Joseph  em- 
barked upon  fortune-telling.  It  may  be 
proper  to  add  that  the  well  had  not  been 
dug  by  him,  for  he  had  a  deep-seated  an- 
tipathy to  every  sort  of  undignified  exer- 
tion. He  preferred  more  lucrative  and 
less  arduous  avocations,  such  as  the  pos- 
session of  the  magic  peek-stone  now 
opened  to  him — pretending  to  be  able  by 
its  agency  to  recover  lost  or  stolen  prop- 
erty and  find  hidden  pirate  hoards.  Many 
people  paid  him  money  for  the  exercise  of 
his  clairvoyant  gifts.  One  easygoing  and 


"JOE   SMITH,   PROPHET"  17 

superstitions  farmer  furnished  a  sheep  for 
a  blood-offering  in  treasure-seeking  incan- 
tations— which  sheep  was  promptly  trans- 
formed into  mutton  under  the  auspices  of 
the  budding  prophet's  mother.  When  the 
lost  property  failed  to  turn  up,  or  the  chest 
of  gold  did  not  materialize,  Joe  had  ever 
an  ingenious  explanation  for  the  failure, 
and  nearly  always  managed  to  placate  the 
wrath  of  his  disappointed  dupes.  Such 
was  the  boyhood  of  Joe  Smith  at  Fayette 
and  Manchester,  whither  his  parents  had 
removed  in  1819. 

A  revival  broke  out,  opening  up  a  new 
field  for  the  idle  and  imaginative  young 
scamp,  who  first  became  a  Methodist  pro- 
bationer, but  soon  backslid  and  began  to 
see  visions,  like  his  mother.  God  the 
Father  and  God  the  Son  appeared  to  him 
while  he  was  at  prayer  in  a  forest,  bidding 
him  to  ally  himself  with  no  church  extant, 
since  all  were  in  the  meshes  of  error. 
Later  an  angel  clothed  in  supernal  glory 
announced  to  him  that  he  himself  was  the 
chosen  vessel  of  God,  that  his  sins  were 
blotted  out,  and  that  the  acceptable  year 
of  the  Lord  had  come.  He  was  directed 
to  go  to  a  certain  hill,  where  he  would  find 
a  book  of  golden  plates,  together  with  the 
instrument  to  interpret  them.  Strict  in- 
junction was  put  upon  him  not  to  show  the 
plates  to  any  one,  nor  to  use  them  for  self- 


18  MORMON    SAINTS 

ish  gain,  under  penalty  of  death.  Perhaps 
Smith  disregarded  this  warning  later — 
which  would  plausibly  account  for  his  un- 
timely end — though  the  Mormons  have 
never  made  use  of  the  forcible  argument 
that  could  be  based  upon  such  conjecture. 

Smith  henceforth  received  revelation  af- 
ter revelation.  He  found  the  plates  in  the 
spot  indicated,  but  not  being  sufficiently 
sanctified  he  did  not  remove  them.  At  last, 
in  September,  1827,  after  three  years' 
growth  in  holiness,  during  which  he  took 
unto  himself  a  wife  in  spite  of  her  parents' 
opposition,  which  the  father  wished  to 
voice  with  a  shotgun,  the  plates  passed 
into  Joe's  possession.  Together  with  them 
he  found  "two  smooth  three-cornered  dia- 
monds set  in  glass,  which  were  connected 
with  each  other  in  much  the  same  way  as 
old-fashioned  spectacles.'3  These  were 
the  Urim  and  Thummim — the  insignia  of 
Old  Testament  seers — to  be  employed  in 
translating  the  golden  tome.  A  curious 
copper  breastplate  and  a  sword  also  were 
found  in  the  same  spot. 

So  runs  the  Mormon  version.  A  sug- 
gestive commentary  upon  it  is  furnished 
by  the  neighbors  of  the  Smith  family.  One 
of  them,  named  Peter  Ingersoll,  a  close 
friend  of  Joe's,  declared  under  oath  that 
"Smith  told  him  the  whole  story  was  a 
hoax ;  that  he  had  found  no  such  book ;  but 


"JOE   SMITH,    PROPHET"  19 

that  as  he  had  got  the  d — d  fools  fixed,  he 
was  bound  to  carry  out  the  fun. ' ' 

Smith  cajoled  Martin  Harris,  a  well-to- 
do  farmer,  into  supporting  him  while 
translating  the  plates.  Harris,  a  gullible 
fanatic,  had  been  in  turn  Quaker  and  Uni- 
versalist,  Baptist  and  Presbyterian,  and 
pretended  to  have  made  a  trip  to  the  moon. 
Now  he  became  the  Prophet's  secretary. 
A  blanket  was  hung  up  in  a  dark  corner 
to  shield  the  golden  plates  from  profane 
eyes;  behind  this  improvised  curtain, 
which  smacks  of  the  spiritualistic  cabinet, 
sat  Smith,  translating  aloud,  while  Harris 
reduced  it  to  writing.  What  would  have 
been  the  outcome  had  Harris  been  of  skep- 
tical nature  and  torn  down  the  curtain? 
Probably  no  Mormon  problem  would  ever 
have  arisen  to  vex  the  nation.  But  per- 
haps Smith  might  have  met  the  emergency 
as  he  did  in  a  similar  contretemps.  A 
couple  of  cronies,  after  vainly  urging  him 
to  show  them  his  wonderful  find^  were  per- 
mitted a  glimpse  of  its  shape  beneath  a 
piece  of  canvas.  One  of  them,  with  the 
words,  "Egad,  I'll  see  the  critter,  live  or 
die !"  whisked  off  the  covering,  and  a  large 
brick  was  revealed.  Smith  pretended  he 
had  played  a  joke  on  them,  and  some  po- 
tations from  his  whiskey-flask  again  put 
everybody  into  good  humor. 

Smith  found    another    ally,  even  more 


20  MORMON    SAINTS 

congenial  and  valuable  than  Martin  Har- 
ris, in  a  stranded  schoolmaster,  sometime 
a  blacksmith,  named  Oliver  Cowdery. 
John  the  Baptist,  appearing  in  a  vision, 
commanded  the  pair  to  baptize  each  other 
by  immersion,  at  the  same  time  consecrat- 
ing them  "Priests  of  the  Order  of  Aaron. " 
As  soon  as  the  rite  had  been  performed, 
the  Holy  Ghost  came  upon  them  with  the 
gift  of  prophecy.  By  Cowdery 's  aid — 
Smith  could  not  then  write  legibly — the 
translation  of  the  "Golden  Bible"  was 
completed,  and  the  pair  began  to  preach 
the  new  gospel.  They  gained  a  few  con- 
verts, but  were  too  well  known  in  the  com- 
munity to  meet  with  any  great  measure  of 
success.  Most  of  the  converts  afterward 
backslid;  it  is  doubtful  if  any  was  sincere 
except  Martin  Harris,  a  dupe  so  simple- 
minded  that  he  bought  Smith's  wedding 
suit  for  him  upon  the  representation  that 
it  was  needed  for  missionary  work. 

From  this  time  forth  the  life  of  Smith 
runs  parallel  with  the  history  of  the  Mor- 
mon church.  Whether  he  was  the  real 
originator,  or  only  the  cat's-paw  of  Sidney 
Rigdon,  whose  connection  with  the  begin- 
nings of  the  church  will  be  touched  upon 
later,  Smith  from  the  first  was  the  ac- 
knowledged head  and  front  of  the  scheme. 
He  possessed  in  a  remarkable  degree  the 
qualities  essential  to  success  in  such  an 


"JOE    SMITH,   PROPHET"  21 

undertaking — unscrupulous  audacity,  un- 
blushing impudence,  and  the  nimbus  of 
necromantic  power. 

That  Joseph  Smith  was  a  deliberate 
impostor,  as  the  earlier  critics  of  Mor- 
monism  asserted,  is  not  now  believed  by 
students  of  psychology.  The  dupe  of  his 
own  imagination,  perhaps  an  epileptic  like 
Paul  and  Mahomet,  he  was  a  victim  of  the 
religious  crazes  that  swept  the  New  York 
lake  region.  Having  received  this  im- 
pulse and  acquired  this  propensity,  he 
found  it  profitable  and  easy  to  expand  his 
first  revelations  into  systematic  deception 
—like  those  spiritualistic  mediums  who 
supplement  their  "phenomena"  with 
tricks.  Beginning  as  a  mystic  with  hal- 
lucinations, Joe  Smith  developed  into  a 
professional  high-priest  of  humbug. 

Smith's  pretended  revelations  certainly 
appeared  to  be  the  crudest  and  most  pal- 
pable sort  of  imposture,  and  it  is  amazing 
that  they  were  swallowed  by  his  dupes. 
Soon  after  the  Book  of  Mormon  was  print- 
ed, and  when  the  printer  was  clamoring 
for  his  money,  Smith  had  a  revelation  com- 
manding Martin  Harris  to  foot  the  bill: 
"I  command  thee  that  thou  shalt  not  covet 
thine  own  property,  but  impart  it  freely 
to  the  printing  of  the  Book  of  Mormon, 
which  contains  the  truth  and  the  word  of 
God.  Pay  the  debt  thou  has  contracted 


22  MORMON    SAINTS 

with  the  printer. "  No  ambiguity  about 
that  oracle!  Another  revelation  com- 
manded the  church  to  build  a  house  for 
Smith.  Still  another  ordered  that  he  "be 
provided  with  food  and  raiment,  and  what- 
soever things  he  needeth  to  accomplish  the 
work  wherewith  I  have  commanded  him. ' ' 
The  irreverent  may  note  the  unconvention- 
ality  of  the  grammar,  which  the  giant  spec- 
tacles of  the  Urim  and  Thummim  seeming- 
ly were  powerless  to  overcome. 

Despite  the  defects  of  his  education  and 
his  moral  delinquencies,  Joseph  Smith  was 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  his 
time.  His  portrait,  long  in  the  possession 
of  Brigham  Young,  shows  him  to  have  had 
features  regular  and  not  unintelligent. 
Physically  he  was  tall  and  well-propor- 
tioned, with  light  hair,  blue  eyes,  and  cal- 
low face.  He  was  mild  and  suave  in 
manner,  yet  always  carried  his  measures 
—a  born  leader  of  men.  He  could  endure 
privation  and  persecution  unflinchingly  to 
gain  his  ends ;  yet  he  was  fond  of  ease  and 
luxury,  and  from  his  sensuous  nature 
doubtless  proceeded  the  revelation  enjoin- 
ing polygamy  upon  the  church — a  feature 
of  its  creed  that  has  roused  more  hostility 
than  all  others.  In  this,  also,  he  resembled 
Mahomet,  who  had  a  special  revelation 
(Sura  33  of  the  Koran)  when  he  wished  to 


"JOE    SMITH,    PROPHET"  23 

marry  the  wife  of  his  adopted  son  Zaid, 
a  thing  abhorrent  to  the  Arabs . 

Such  was  the  man  who  founded  a  great 
religion  upon  flimsy  mummeries,  and  es- 
tablished it  despite  ridicule  and  malignant 
opposition;  the  man  who  was  tarred  and 
feathered  in  Ohio,  driven  from  Missouri 
by  the  militia,  jailed  and  lynched  in  Illi- 
nois; the  man  who  built  three  flourishing 
cities,  and  had  the  effrontery  to  run  for 
the  presidency  of  the  United  States;  the 
man  whose  spirit,  though  like  Moses  he 
never  trod  the  promised  land,  dominates 
the  state  of  Utah  to-day  and  is  one  of  the 
mightiest  factors  in  the  ultramontane 
region  of  the  great  West. 


24  MORMON    SAINTS 


CHAPTER  III 


The  Book  of  Mormon 

It  will  be  well,  before  pursuing  further 
the  fortunes  of  the  infant  church,  to  pause 
and  look  into  the  supposedly  sacred  vol- 
ume from  which  it  sprang.  The  Mormons 
derive  their  name  from  this  book,  which 
they  believe  to  have  been  written  in  the 
fourth  century  by  the  Hebrew-American 
hero-chief  Mormon.  It  has  been  trans- 
lated into  German,  French,  Spanish, 
Italian,  Swedish,  Danish,  Welsh,  Ha- 
waiian, and  a  dozen  other  languages,  and 
scattered  broadcast  over  the  world  by 
Mormon  missionaries.  The  volume  is  a 
queer  hash — just  such  a  work  as  might 
have  been  expected  of  Joseph  Smith — a 
mixture  of  Holy  Writ  with  blood-and- 
thunder  fiction.  Its  plot  is  as  follows : 

After  the  confusion  of  tongues  at  the 
building  of  the  tower  of  Babel,  God  scat- 
tered the  various  tribes  of  mankind  over 
the  face  of  the  earth.  Several  families, 
descendants  of  Jared,  came  to  America, 
where  they  increased  and  multiplied.  At 
first  they  prospered,  living  righteously; 
but  later  wickedness  began  to  flourish 
among  them,  until,  about  600  B.  c.,  they 


THE   BOOK   OF   MORMON  26 

were  punished  for  their  transgressions  by 
total  annihilation.  Their  history  was 
written  and  the  record  hidden  away  by 
their  great  prophet  Ether.  Let  not  the 
irreverent  therefore  deem  it  "light  as 
air,"  nor  suggest  its  affinity  to  laughing 
gas. 

Now  about  this  time,  while  Zedekiah  sat 
on  the  throne  of  Judah,  Lehi,  a  holy  man 
of  the  tribe  of  Joseph,  divinely  warned 
of  Jerusalem's  impending  destruction, 
was  by  God's  hand  led  to  America.  Lehi 
landed  on  the  coast  of  Chile,  and  his  de- 
scendants, spreading  northward,  re- 
peopled  the  land,  and  found  records  of 
the  extinct  Jaredites.  Both  of  the  races 
now  dwelling  on  the  continent,  the  sons  of 
Nephi  and  the  sons  of  Laman,  waxed  pros- 
perous and  mighty  like  their  predecessors. 
But  the  Lamanites  lapsed  into  barbarism, 
while  the  Nephites,  specially  favored  by 
the  Lord,  attained  high  civilization.  They 
lived  according  to  the  law  of  Moses,  which 
they  had  brought  across  the  sea5  and  were 
ruled  by  judges,  kings,  and  prophets,  even 
as  Israel.  Visions  and  angels'  visits  were 
vouchsafed  to  their  patriarchs  and  holy 
men,  and  in  the  fullness  of  time,  after  his 
death  on  the  cross  and  his  ascension, 
Christ  came  down  to  visit  America  and 
organized  the  church  there  as  he  had  in 
Judea. 


26  MORMON    SAINTS 

Three  or  four  centuries  after  Christ,  the 
Nephites,  lapsing  into  sin,  were  delivered 
into  the  hand  of  the  savage  Lamanites, 
progenitors  of  the  American  Indians.  The 
great  Nephite  hero-prophet  Mormon  had 
been  commanded  to  inscribe  the  records  of 
his  nation  upon  golden  tables,  which  he 
committed  to  his  son  Moroni,  who  hid 
them  in  the  hill  Cumorah  when  the  Laman- 
ites destroyed  his  people,  slaying  230,000 
in  a  great  battle.  The  Urim  and  Thum- 
mim  were  put  with  the  tables,  so  that  the 
finder  might  be  able  to  interpret  the  writ- 
ings. In  due  time  these  plates  were  dis- 
covered by  Joseph  Smith. 

Such  is  the  story  of  the  Book  of  Mor- 
mon. The  plates  of  fine  gold  which  Smith 
professed  to  have  found,  guided  by  an 
angel,  have  aroused  much  incredulous 
criticism.  They  were  not  shown  to  any 
one  until  two  years  after  Smith  first  an- 
nounced their  discovery.  Even  then  they 
were  displayed  only  to  eleven  persons; 
the  remainder  of  the  world  was  not  holy 
enough  to  be  permitted  a  glance  at  these 
writings  in  '  'Beformed  Egyptian,"  a 
language  hitherto  unknown  to  philology. 
To  make  matters  worse,  the  book  with  the 
other  paraphernalia  was  returned  to  the 
angel  after  Smith  had  done  with  them, 
which  of  course  disposes  of  any  hope  that 
future  generations  of  linguists  may  un- 


THE   BOOK   OF   MORMON  27 

ravel  its  cabalistic  runes  into  a  grammar 
and  a  lexicon. 

The  breastplate,  which  only  Smith's 
mother  ever  saw,  and  a  sword,  never 
shown  to  any  one — what  prizes  these  for 
a  museum !  It  seems  to  have  been  the  ori- 
ginal intention  to  exhibit  the  plates,  after 
the  translation  was  completed,  charging 
twenty-five  cents  admission;  but  this  plan 
was  never  carried  into  execution.  Either 
the  plates  were  mythical,  or  exposure  was 
feared.  But  what  an  impetus  it  would 
have  given  the  faith  if  the  original  plates 
could  have  been  displayed  in  the  sanctu- 
ary of  its  several  Zions,  or  could  have  been 
sent  forth  to  confound  the  learning  of  the 
schools!  Or  if  the  volume,  surely  24 
carats  fine,  had  been  melted  down  to  pay 
for  printing  the  first  edition  of  the  ' '  trans- 
lation," on  the  title-page  of  which,  it  may 
be  interesting  to  remember,  Smith  pro- 
claimed himself  the  "  author  and  proprie- 
tor." The  plates  were  said  to  be  eight 
inches  long  and  seven  in  width,  about  the 
thickness  of  tin ;  three  gold  rings  fastened 
these  plates  together  into  a  volume  six 
inches  thick  and  weighing  about  sixty 
pounds.  The  United  States  mint  would 
have  returned  coin  enough  to  save  Mar- 
tin Harris  from  mortgaging  his  farm, 
with  something  over  to  pay  the  debts  the 


28  MORMON    SAINTS 

Smiths  left  behind  them  when  they  mi- 
grated from  Palmyra  to  Kirtland,  Ohio. 

The  eleven  persons  whose  testimony 
that  they  saw  the  original  plates  is  pre- 
fixed to  the  later  editions  of  the  Book  of 
Mormon  can  hardly  be  called  disinterested 
witnesses.  The  first  three  are  Oliver 
Cowdery,  David  Whitmer,  and  Martin 
Harris.  Cowdery  and  Harris  were 
Smith's  confederates  in  the  labor  of  trans- 
lation; Harris  was  also  financially  inter- 
ested to  a  considerable  sum;  while  David 
Whitmer  belonged  to  a  family  "  noted  for 
credulity  and  a  belief  in  witches,"  who  of- 
fered Smith  an  asylum  in  their  home  soon 
after  the  story  of  the  Golden  Bible  was 
bruited  about.  Besides,  the  testimony  of 
these  three  witnesses  contains  so  many 
things  of  which  they  can  not  have  been 
sure,  that  we  may  well  doubt  their  reli- 
ability as  to  those  points  upon  which  they 
should  have  been  sure.  Harris ,  when 
questioned  closely,  used  to  explain  that  he 
had  seen  the  plates  "with  his  spiritual 
eye, ' '  and  we  may  well  believe  that  he  saw 
them  through  Smith's  spiritual  spectacles, 
for  it  seems  almost  certain  that  the  whole 
of  the  testimony  was  drawn  up  by  Smith 
himself. 

Cowdery  and  Whitmer  were  subsequent- 
ly expelled  from  the  church  —  called 
"murderers  at  heart"  by  Smith,  and 


THE   BOOK   OP  MORMON 


"counterfeiters,  thieves,  liars,  blacklegs  of 
the  deepest  dye,"  by  Sidney  Rigdon. 
Harris  also  was  expelled,  having  mu- 
tinied at  the  shabby  treatment  Smith  ac- 
corded him  after  his  money  was  gone,  but 
he  never  recanted  his  belief  in  Mormon- 
ism. 

Of  the  eight  other  witnesses,  five  were 
relatives  of  Whitmer's  and  the  remaining 
three  were  Smith's  father  and  two  bro- 
thers. So  it  appears  that  this  testimony, 
taken  at  its  full  value,  is  pretty  much  a 
family  affair.  A  simple  diagram  will 
make  this  plain: 

Joseph  Smith,  the  Prophet 


g 

p 

•^ 

c+ 

5" 
P 


o 
o 


— 

CD 


Martin  Harris  w^as  a  practical  man  as 
well  as  a  man  of  faith,  and  hoped  to  reap 
a  golden  reward  on  earth  as  well  as  oc- 
cupy a  front  pew  in  the  New  Jerusalem. 
Impelled  by  this  practical  vein  in  his  char- 
acter, and  probably  instigated  by  his 


30  MORMON    SAINTS 

Quaker  wife,  who  treated  the  whole  matter 
as  "craziness,"  he  insisted  upon  being 
given  a  copy  of  the  writing,  which  he  took 
to  New  York  and  showed  to  various  schol- 
ars, asking  their  opinion.  The  Mormons 
assert  that  the  famous  Prof.  Charles  An- 
thon  declared  the  characters  to  be  Egyp- 
tian, Chaldean,  Assyrian,  and  Arabic, 
Anthon  in  a  letter  denied  having  given 
any  such  ridiculous  opinion,  but  suspected 
that  an  attempt  was  being  made  to  vic- 
timize Harris,  and  accordingly  warned 
him.  But  Harris,  it  is  supposed,  was  only 
confirmed  in  his  faith  by  any  warning. 
"God  hath  chosen  the  foolish  things  of  the 
world  to  confound  the  wise,"  was  his  fa- 
vorite axiom. 

Harris's  wife  burned  a  part  of  the  man- 
uscript secretly,  thinking  to  put  an  end  to 
the  scheme.  This  brought  about  a  cool- 
ness between  Harris  and  Smith,  the  Pro- 
phet suspecting  the  farmer  of  having  con- 
nived at  the  loss  of  the  precious  pages. 
Smith  had  a  convenient  revelation  order- 
ing him  not  to  retranslate  the  lost  portion, 
lest,  if  the  stolen  copy  should  be  found  and 
differed  from  the  new  version,  skeptics 
might  scoff  at  God's  word. 

Although  Harris  declared  that  "Bro- 
ther Joseph  drank  too  much  liquor  while 
translating  the  Book  of  Mormon/'  the 
translation  was  finally  completed.  The 


THE   BOOK   OF   MORMON  31 

work  was  printed  and  given  to  the  world 
in  1830,  Harris  mortgaging  his  farm  for 
$3,000  to  make  this  possible.  It  was  a 
book  of  588  octavo  pages,  and  was  to  be 
sold  at  the  specially  revealed  price  of 
$1.25.  Harris  was  to  have  the  exclusive 
selling  rights;  but  he  proved  a  failure  as 
a  colporteur,  and  the  books  were  finally 
sold,  traded,  or  disposed  of  in  any  way 
that  would  redound  to  the  greater  af- 
fluence and  comfort  of  the  Smith  family. 

The  meaning  of  the  word  " Mormon," 
which  is  Greek  for  "bugaboo,"  has  been 
explained  by  Smith  with  a  happier  ety- 
mology. "Mon"  in  Egyptian  means 
"good,"  and  "mor"  is  a  contraction  of 
"more;"  hence  "Mormon"  means  "more 
good"  or  "better."  Such  hybrid  deriva- 
tions being  contrary  to  the  best  usage,  it 
might  be  suggested  that  "mon"  be  treated 
as  a  contraction  of  "money,"  and  that  the 
full  meaning  is  "more  money." 

Part  of  the  "Golden  Bible"  was  sealed, 
so  that  it  could  neither  be  opened  nor  read. 
The  writing  was  in  a  "  small  unknown 
character;"  the  facsimiles  of  it  shown 
rather  resemble  the  hieroglyphics  execut- 
ed by  a  very  small  boy  who  has  surrepti- 
tiously secured  his  father's  pen.  There 
are  Arabic  numerals,  dots  and  dashes,  cir- 
cles and  squares,  Roman  letters  at  all  an- 
gles and  upside  down,  with  queer  curly- 


32  MORMON    SAINTS 

cues  that  look  like  a  clumsy  forgery  of 
a  laundry-check. 

The  original  mss.  of  the  new  Bible  had 
no  marks  of  punctuation  and  no  capital 
letters,  nor  were  there  any  paragraphs. 
The  Urim  and  Thummim  did  not  pay 
any  attention  to  typographical  details. 
After  handling  a  few  pages  of  the  "copy," 
the  printer  who  got  out  the  first  edition 
had  found  that  his  reputation  would  be 
forever  lost  if  he  printed  the  book  "as  it 
was  written. "  Finally,  after  much  expos- 
tulation ,  Smith  modified  the  command- 
ment of  the  Lord  forbidding  any  changes, 
and  gave  the  printer  limited  liberty  as  to 
nonessentials.  Thus  it  appears  that  the 
new-fledged  Prophet  was  already  learned 
in  the  wisdom  of  the  Higher  Critics.  Not- 
withstanding the  printer's  corrections, 
the  first  edition  of  the  "inspired"  vol- 
ume was  full  of  errors  in  spelling  and 
grammar,  capitalizing  and  punctuation— 
to  say  nothing  of  anachronisms,  gross  his- 
torical blunders,  glaring  absurdities,  and 
stilted  imitations  of  scriptural  phraseol- 
ogy— six  hundred  pages  of  dull  drivel. 

Those  hero-prophets  of  prehistoric 
America  were  wondrously  endowed,  as 
they  could  quote  from  Hamlet  and  the 
King  James  Bible  a  thousand  years  be- 
fore Shakespeare  and  King  James  were 
born — plain  proof  of  inspiration!  But 


THE   BOOK   OF   MORMON  33 

tlu»  work  adds  nothing  to  human  know- 
ledge except  the  names  of  two  animals, 
"cureloms  and  cumoms,"  hitherto  un- 
known to  Zoology.  Along  with  Leviathan 
and  Behemoth,  these  creatures  would 
prove  drawing-cards  for  any  menagerie. 
Some  inspired  artist  should  paint  these 
beasts  and  resolve  all  doubts  about  them. 
Has  the  curelom  wings  or  a  prehensile 
tail?  Is  the  cumom  carnivorous  or  does 
it  feed  upon  nuts? 

But  what  of  the  true  origin  of  this 
sacred  book?  One  widely  accepted  theory 
identifies  it  with  an  archeological  romance, 
The  Manuscript  Found,  written  by  the 
Eev.  Solomon  Spaulding  about  1809. 
Spaulding  believed  the  American  conti- 
nent to  have  been  colonized  by  the  ancient 
Israelites,  and  that  the  Indians  are  their 
descendants.  Upon  this  theory — which 
belongs  in  the  same  category  as  Shake- 
speare-Bacon ciphers  and  Great  Pyramid 
inheritances — the  good  dominie  based  a 
fabulous  history  of  the  mound-builders. 
He  gave  the  manuscript  to  a  Pittsburgh 
bookseller  named  Patterson.  Spaulding 
died  before  an  agreement  as  to  terms  of 
publication  could  be  reached,  and  the 
manuscript  remained  in  Patterson's  pos- 
session. 

Now  another  character  appears  upon 
the  stage  of  this  religious  melodrama.  It 


34  MORMON    SAINTS 

is  Sidney  Eigdon,  who  afterward  became 
the  great  apostle  of  Mormonism.  Eig- 
don  was  a  sort  of  theological  free  lance — 
an  eloquent  speaker  and  a  man  of  much 
executive  ability,  but  given  to  erratic  no- 
tions. He  drifted  from  the  Baptist  fold 
into  the  Disciple,  and  here,  becoming  dis- 
gruntled at  real  or  fancied  slights  put  up- 
on him  by  Alexander  Campbell,  he  prob- 
ably conceived  the  idea  of  starting  a  re- 
ligion of  his  own.  It  is  known  that  he 
worked  at  the  printer's  case  in  his  young- 
er days,  and  it  seems  that  he  was  in  Pat- 
terson's employ  or  loafed  about  the  place, 
and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  in  some  way  or 
other  he  got  hold  of  the  Spaulding  manu- 
script. 

Learning  through  the  papers  of  Smith's 
necromantic  and  clairvoyant  perform- 
ances, and  of  his  " magic  peek-stone," 
Bigdon  saw  in  him  a  perhaps  valuable 
ally.  Perhaps  they  met  on  one  of  Eig- 
don's  tours  as  a  Campbellite  evangelist; 
perhaps  the  tin-peddling  theologian,  Par- 
ley Pratt,  who  will  play  a  great  role  in 
the  future  of  the  new  religion,  was  the  go- 
between.  An  understanding  was  reached 
in  some  way,  and  the  result  was  that 
Spaulding 's  tale,  greatly  padded  and  al- 
tered to  suit  the  purposes  of  the  schemers, 
in  due  time  made  its  appearance  as  the 
Book  of  Mormon. 


THE    BOOK    OF   MORMON  35 

Rig-don  was  often  away  from  home  for 
weeks  while  the  translation  was  going  on, 
and  a  "  mysterious  stranger "  made  fre- 
quent visits  to  the  Smith  homestead  dur- 
ing the  same  time.  All  this,  with  the  ad- 
ditional fact  that  Rigdon  in  Ohio  spoke  of 
the  new  revelation  before  it  was  made  pub- 
lic, forms  a  fairly  complete  chain  of  cir- 
cumstantial evidence.  A  number  of  per- 
sons, including  the  widow,  brother,  busi- 
ness partner,  and  neighbors  of  Spaulding, 
also  identified  his  romance  as  the  ground- 
work of  the  Book  of  Mormon — the  same 
characters,  the  same  plot,  the  same  pecu- 
liar diction  and  style.  Spaulding  ?s  origi- 
nal manuscript  was  reported  to  have  been 
found  at  Honolulu  in  1885,  and  this  ms.  is 
at  present  in  the  library  of  Oberlin  Col- 
lege, but  it  is  generally  believed  to  be  a 
forgery. 

Such,  according  to  the  most  plausible 
theory,  was  the  genesis  of  that  sacred  vol- 
ume, holding  which  in  one  hand  and  the 
Bible  in  the  other,  and  suddenly  clapping 
them  together—  an  effective  oratorical 
trick — Sidney  Rigdon  in  his  Mormon  ser- 
mons declared  that  the  two  books  were 
each  incomplete  without  the  other. 

The  Spaulding-Rigdon  theory  of  the 
Book  of  Mormon  may  be  wrong — indeed, 
it  is  almost  superfluous.  The  book  con- 
tains nothing  which  Joseph  Smith  might 


36  MORMON    SAINTS 

not  have  evolved.  It  is  a  religious  dime- 
novel  written  in  the  style  of  Kings  and 
Chronicles,  interminable,  prosaic,  platitu- 
dinous, ungrammatical.  It  will  never  be 
attacked  by  any  Higher  Criticism :  it  is  be- 
neath all  criticism.  Yet  it  is  believed  im- 
plicitly by  hundreds  of  thousands.  Very 
true  are  the  words  of  the  great  historian 
Edward  Gibbon:  "The  practice  of  super- 
stition is  so  congenial  to  the  multitude 
that,  if  they  are  forcibly  awakened,  they 
still  regret  the  loss  of  their  pleasing 
vision.***  So  urgent  on  the  vulgar  is  the 
necessity  of  believing,  that  the  fall  of  any 
system  of  mythology  will  most  probably 
be  succeeded  by  the  introduction  of  some 
other  mode  of  superstition."  Very  true 
— and  yet  how  tragical ! 


BIRTH   OP  A  NEW  RELIGION  37 


CHAPTER  IV 


The  Birth  of  a  New  Eeligion 

It  was  a  time  of  spiritual  unrest. 
Mushroom  sects  sprang  up  over  night; 
epidemic  delusions  swept  across  the  land, 
like  the  flagellant  and  dancing  manias  of 
the  Middle  Ages.  The  appearance  of  a 
comet  would  throw  whole  communities  in- 
to a  frenzy  of  preparation  for  the  day  of 
wrath.  To  this  period  belong  the  vaga- 
ries of  the  Millerites,  and  the  meteoric 
career  of  Dylks,  the  Leatherwood  Mes- 
siah; this  period  also  marked  the  rise  of 
the  Disciples,  the  Winebrennerians,  the 
Free- Will  Baptists.  Religious  excitement 
everywhere  blazed  up  in  remarkable  re- 
vivals, which  were  often  attended  by  pe- 
culiar physical  and  psychical  phenomena 
— shouting,  grimacing,  writhing,  as  in  con- 
vulsions. The  "Barkers"  would  gather 
around  a  tree,  snarling  and  yapping  like 
dogs,  which  they  called  "treeing  the 
devil ; ' '  camp-meetings  would  be  convulsed 
with  "holy  laughter"  that  could  be  heard 
a  long  distance  off  for  hours  and  days.  It 
was  an  age  of  religious  epidemics. 

The  cause  of  this  unsettled  state  of  the 
popular  mind,  and  of  the  consequent  ready 


38  MORMON    SAINTS 

responsiveness  to  religious  freaks  and 
frauds,  is  not  hard  to  find.  The  labors 
and  privations  of  pioneer  life  were  rapidly 
being  superseded  by  the  comfort  and  se- 
curity of  established  communities,  while 
education  had  not  yet  clarified  the  seeth- 
ing brains.  In  the  fallow  soil  of  leisure 
and  naive  ignorance  Mormonism  quickly 
took  root,  like  a  score  of  other  religious 
crazes  of  the  day,  which  had  not  its  pecu- 
liar elements  of  vitality  and  so  perished. 

The  church  was  definitely  organized  at 
Fayette,  New  York,  in  1830,  on  April  sixth. 
Why  not  five  days  sooner,  may  be  asked, 
to  conserve  the  eternal  fitness  of  things? 
The  six  original  members  were  Joseph 
Smith,  senior,  Hyrum  Smith,  Joseph 
Smith,  junior,  Samuel  Smith,  Oliver  Cow- 
dery,  and  Joseph  Knight.  At  first  they 
called  themselves  the  "Church  of  Christ," 
soon,  however,  they  styled  it  the  ' '  Church 
of  Jesus  Christ  of  Latter-Day  Saints" — 
now  usually  abridged  to  "Latter-Day 
Saints." 

The  first  conference  of  the  new-fledged 
church  was  held  the  same  year,  in  the  be- 
ginning of  June,  with  thirty  members  pre- 
sent. Missionaries  were  sent  out,  and  an 
evangelistic  campaign  inaugurated.  Elder 
Oliver  Cowdery  preached  the  first  sermon ; 
Parley  Pratt,  already  mentioned,  whose 
time  was  divided  between  peddling  tin- 


BIRTH   OP  A  NEW  RELIGION  39 

ware  and  proclaiming  the  gospel,  also  en- 
tered the  apostolate;  Martin  Harris  har- 
angued crowds  at  street  corners  and  in 
taverns.  Sidney  Eigdon  soon  threw  off 
his  mask,  and  embraced  the  new  faith.  He 
had  been  gradually  preparing  his  congre- 
gation at  Kirtland,  Ohio,  for  the  change; 
now,  at  the  start,  he  made  a  melodramatic 
show  of  opposition,  to  render  his  conver- 
sion all  the  more  impressive.  He  went 
through  a  vehement  public  debate  with 
Pratt,  yielding  inch  by  inch,  and  at  last 
surrendered,  professing  to  have  received 
the  Spirit's  witness  to  the  truth  of  the  new 
revelation.  The  trump  of  the  latter-day 
gospel  was  sounded  with  might  and  main ; 
conversions  came  thick  and  fast — except 
around  Palmyra,  where  the  Prophet  and 
his  acolytes  were  too  well  known. 

Of  course,  the  "world"  now  began  to 
afflict  the  Saints.  Joseph  was  arrested, 
charges  of  fraud  being  brought  against 
him.  Though  acquitted  by  the  district 
court,  he  deemed  it  prudent  to  shake  the 
dust  of  the  community  from  his  feet,  es- 
pecially as  threats  and  attempts  of  vio- 
lence were  several  times  made.  In  1831 
he  and  his  followers  removed  to  Kirtland, 
where  Rigdon  already  had  done  effective 
missionary  work. 

There  the  church  grew,  despite  vehem- 
ent opposition.  The  ignorant  and  super- 


40  MORMON    SAINTS 

stitious  were  frightened  into  the  fold  by 
prophecies  such  as  one  by  Martin  Harris, 
that  within  fifteen  years  Christ  would  ap- 
pear and  everybody  who  had  not  accepted 
Mormonism  would  be  damned.  Others 
were  attracted  by  the  fascination  which 
the  strange  and  marvelous  ever  exercises 
over  many  minds;  not  a  few  were  influ- 
enced by  motives  of  cupidity  and  a  desire 
for  place  and  power.  Such  converts  were 
not  susceptible  to  counteractives  like  the 
scholarly  Alexander  Campbell's  expose  of 
the  Book  of  Mormon.  Who  knows  if  in 
centuries  to  come  Campbell's  writings 
may  not  be  lost  like  those  of  Celsus,  who 
criticised  early  Christianity  on  the  ground 
that  "weavers,  tailors,  fullers,  and  the 
most  illiterate  and  rustic  fellows"  were 
preaching  this  gospel  and  exalting  the 
peculiar  glory  of  ignorance!  It  would 
be  no  greater  marvel  than  the  success  of 
the  illiterate  and  rustic  fellows  preaching 
Mormonism  among  people  of  their  own 
stamp.  Still,  it  would  be  misleading  to 
assume  that  all  the  Mormon  converts  of 
that  day,  or  of  more  recent  time,  were 
ignorant  and  superstitious.  Among  them 
were  men  of  piety  and  learning;  many 
were  descended  from  the  stern  old  Puri- 
tan stock  of  New  England.  Such  was 
Lorenzo  Snow — whose  sister  Eliza  later 
became  one  of  Smith's  wives — an  accom- 


BIRTH  OF  A  NEW  RELIGION  41 

plished  Hebrew  scholar  and  a  graduate  of 
Presbyterian  Oberlin;  such  was  Brigham 
Young,  the  Joshua  of  Mormonism,  whose 
grandfather  was  a  New  England  Metho- 
dist, and  whose  father  fought  in  the  Revo- 
lutionary  war.  Lorin  Farr,  the  first 
mayor  of  Ogden,  came  of  old  New  Hamp- 
shire stock;  Anson  Call's  grandfather 
fought  at  Bunker  Hill  and  under  Wash- 
ington; Abram  Hatch  also  boasted  of  a 
Revolutionary  ancestry;  Franklin  D.  Rich- 
ards was  a  native  of  Massachusetts; 
Francis  M.  Lyman's  grandfather  was  a 
cousin  of  Lyman  Beecher — Henry  Ward 
Beecher  and  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  were 
his  second  cousins.  The  list  might  be  ex- 
tended greatly;  but  these  names  will  suf- 
fice to  show  that  not  merely  the  rabble  was 
captivated  by  the  strange  and  novel  doc- 
trine. 

A  splendid  temple  was  built  at  Kirtland, 
representing  a  value  of  forty  thousand 
dollars.  Apostles  were  sent  forth  to  con- 
vert the  Indian  tribes,  the  "Lamanites," 
to  whom  Smith  professed  to  be  specially 
sent.  A  new  version  of  the  Bible  was 
also  begun  with  the  aid  of  the  tlrim  and 
Thummim.  Ere  long,  however,  it  became 
evident  to  Smith  that  his  plans  could  not 
be  carried  out  to  the  full  in  the  more  set- 
tled states.  In  obedience  to  a  revelation 
— he  now  had  revelations  as  regularly  as 


42  MORMON    SAINTS 

his  meals — another  colony  was  founded  in 
Missouri,  where  the  foundations  of  "the 
glorious  city  of  the  New  Jerusalem"  were 
laid.  The  settlement  prospered,  for  the 
Mormons  spread  its  fame  far  and  wide 
with  an  energy  and  eloquence  that  a  town- 
boomer  of  later  days  might  have  envied. 
"The  streets  would  be  paved  with  gold. 
The  ten  lost  tribes  of  Israel  had  been  dis- 
covered in  the  vicinity  of  the  North  Pole, 
where  they  had  for  ages  been  secluded 
by  immense  barriers  of  ice,  and  had  be- 
come vastly  rich;  the  ice  in  a  few  years 
was  to  be  melted  away,  when  these  tribes, 
with  Saint  John  at  their  head,  would  be 
seen  making  their  appearance  in  the  new 
city,  loaded  with  immense  quantities  of 
gold  and  silver." 

Communism,  with  its  alluring  dream  of 
fraternity  and  its  promise  of  assured  sub- 
sistence, was  another  factor  that  led  many 
to  follow  the  apostles  of  Mormonism.  It 
was  the  time  when  the  Shakers  and  the 
Owenites.  the  Brook  Farmers  and  the 
Harmonists,  formed  their  communities, 
most  of  them  upon  a  religious  basis. 
These  doctrinaires  could  point  to  the  ex- 
ample of  the  early  Christians,  who  had  all 
things  in  common — and  in  a  time  of  eco- 
nomic stress  and  emotional  fervor  such 
teachings  found  many  eager  listeners  to 
accept  them.  As  the  Mormons  increased 


BIRTH   OF   A  NEW   RELIGION  43 

their  worldly  goods,  however,  their  early 
communistic  notions  died  out,  leaving  a 
very  effective  tithing  system  as  their  sur- 
vival in  Mormon  polity. 

Upon  the  return  from  the  first  recon- 
noitering  expedition  into  Missouri,  at- 
tended as  it  was  by  such  disagreeable  ex- 
periences as  a  ducking  in  the  river  and  the 
necessity  of  pawning  their  trunks  to  get 
home,  Smith  and  Kigdon  set  to  work  to 
secure  funds  for  building  the  new  Zion. 
They  opened  a  general  store  at  Hiram 
near  Kirtland,  but  were  tarred  and  feath- 
ered by  a  mob.  They  started  a  "wild- 
cat" bank  at  Kirtland,  and  flooded  the 
region  with  Mormon  money.  Here  the 
trust  principle  was  first  enunciated,  a  "  di- 
vine revelation"  declaring  that  this  bank 
"would  swallow  up  all  other  banks." 
They  also  started  a  paper,  The  Evening 
and  Morning  Star,  which  soon  ceased  to 
twinkle. 

As  the  household  of  the  faithful  increas- 
ed, Smith  and  his  adjutants  saw  the  nec- 
essity of  adopting  some  fixed  church 
polity.  So  they  compiled  the  Book  of 
Doctrine  and  Covenants,  and  organized 
the  "Council"  of  twelve  high-priests  and 
three  presidents.  Then  a  quorum  of 
"Twelve  Apostles"  was  constituted.  The 
picturesque  and  poetic  spirit  pervading 
the  church  at  that  early  day,  which  must 


44  MORMON    SAINTS 

have  thrown  a  glamour  over  all  its  claims 
in  the  eyes  of  simple-minded  and  pious 
folk,  spread  its  wings  in  the  sobriquets  be- 
stowed upon  those  "apostles."  Brigham 
Young  was  the  Lion  of  the  Lord;  Parley 
Pratt,  the  Archer  of  Paradise;  Orson 
Hyde,  the  Olive-Branch  of  Israel;  Wil- 
lard  Eichards,  the  Keeper  of  the  Eolls; 
John  Taylor,  the  Champion  of  Eight; 
William  Smith,  the  Patriarchal  Jacob's 
Staff;  Wilford  Woodruff,  the  Banner  of 
the  Gospel;  George  A.  Smith,  the  Entab- 
lature of  Truth;  Orson  Pratt,  the  Gauge 
of  Philosophy;  John  E.  Page,  the  Sun- 
Dial ;  Lyman  Wright,  the  Wild  Earn  of  the 
Mountains. 

The  collapse  of  the  Kirtland  community 
came  with  the  financial  panic  of  1837.  The 
bank  that  was  to  swallow  all  other  banks 
had  flooded  the  Western  Eeserve  with 
worthless  scrip.  An  action  for  unlawful 
banking  was  brought  against  Eigdon  and 
Smith;  other  troubles  began  to  multiply. 
The  temple  had  already  been  mortgaged — 
not  by  the  church,  but  by  Smith,  Eigdon, 
et  al.  When  the  bank  closed  its  doors, 
Mormonism  pulled  up  stakes,  and  the  he- 
gira  to  the  Missouri  Zion  began,  culminat- 
ing in  the  Prophet's  inglorious  midnight 
flight,  which  he  justified  by  the  saying  of 
Jesus :  "  When  they  persecute  you  in  one 
city,  flee  ye  to  another." 


BIRTH   OP  A   NEW  RELIGION  45 

Meanwhile  the  Missouri  colony,  "  where 
Christ  would  shortly  reign  in  person/' 
had  grown  to  about  1,500  souls  and  was 
progressing  finely;  but  some  practices  of 
the  Saints  brought  upon  them  the  odium 
of  their  neighbors.  Resolutions  were 
passed  ordering  all  Mormons  to  leave  the 
state,  forbidding  any  others  to  enter  it, 
and  closing  with  this  delicious  morsel  of 
irony:  "That  those  who  fail  to  comply 
with  these  requisitions,  be  referred  to 
those  of  their  brethren  who  have  the  gifts 
of  divination  and  of  unknown  tongues,  to 
inform  them  of  the  lot  that  awaits  them." 
Joseph,  appealed  to  as  Prophet,  preached 
resistance  and  predicted  victory;  so  a 
Mormon  army,  two  hundred  and  five  men 
strong,  had  set  out  from  Kirtland  to  smite 
the  Gentiles.  Their  banner  was  milky 
white,  with  the  word  "Peace"  printed  up- 
on it  in  blood-red  characters.  But  when 
they  arrived  in  Missouri,  and  saw  the  Gen- 
tile host,  instead  of  "possessing  the  land" 
they  possessed  themselves  in  patience,  and 
decided  to  take  the  inscription  of  the  ban- 
ner literally  as  their  motto. 

When  Smith  arrived  in  Missouri,  Far 
West  was  the  nucleus  of  the  Mormon  col- 
ony there.  A  new  temple  was  projected, 
"upon  the  very  spot  where  the  Garden  of 
Eden  had  once  been."  But  trouble  was 
brewing.  Cowdery  and  Harris  were  ex- 


46  MORMON    SAINTS 

communicated;  Thomas  B.  Marsh,  the 
president  of  the  Apostles,  apostatized  and 
charged  his  late  brethren  with  many  mis- 
deeds, among  them  counterfeiting,  cattle- 
thieving,  immoral  practices,  and  treason 
against  the  state.  The  people  of  Missouri 
rose;  civil  war  was  rife;  the  militia  had 
to  be  called  out.  The  end  of  the  trouble 
was  that  the  Mormons  again  had  to  cross 
the  Father  of  Waters.  As  a  Mormon 
hymn  phrases  it — a  genuine  Mormon 
hymn,  for  all  its  Gilbertian  comic-opera 
flavor — 

"Missouri, 

Like  a  whirlwind  in  its  fury, 
And  without  a  judge  or  jury, 
Drove  the  Saints  and  spilled  their  blood/' 


NAUVOO    THE    BEAUTIFUL  47 


CHAPTER  V 


Nauvoo  the  Beautiful 

In  the  spring  of  1839  the  Mormons,  now 
more  sinned  against  than  sinning,  crossed 
over  into  Illinois,  and  there,  about  fifty 
miles  above  Quincy,  on  a  rolling  plain  in 
a  curve  of  the  majestic  stream^  founded 
Nauvoo  the  Beautiful.  Both  the  name  of 
the  new  city  and  its  significance  were  re- 
vealed to  Smith,  who  ruled  over  it  as  pro- 
phet, priest,  and  king.  Soon  the  desert 
blossomed  like  the  rose,  and  the  erection 
of  another  pretentious  temple  was  begun, 
a  limestone  of  marmorean  beauty  and  dur- 
ability being  used  in  the  building.  From 
near  and  far  the  faithful  flocked  to  the 
new  settlement;  many  converts  were  at- 
tracted through  sympathy  aroused  by  the 
Missouri  persecutions;  and  ere  long  Nau- 
voo had  a  population  of  ten  thousand 
souls.  The  city  was  well  governed. 
Saloons  and  drunkenness  were  unknown. 
The  Mormon  virtues  of  industry  and 
thrift  were  abundantly  in  evidence.  The 
idle  were  "whittled"  out  of  town — sur- 
rounded by  a  committee  of  citizens,  who 
whittled  their  sticks  at  them  until  they 
left — a  curious  Yankee  mode  of  ostracism ! 


48  MORMON    SAINTS 

As  the  number  of  Mormons  grew,  Smith 
began  to  dabble  in  politics.  He  con- 
trolled the  vote  of  Nauvoo  and  the  county 
almost  absolutely;  in  one  election  only  six 
votes  were  cast  in  opposition  to  his  dictum. 
This  power  he  used  to  obtain  for  Nauvoo 
a  charter  giving  the  church  almost  unlimit- 
ed rights  and  privileges.  The  Prophet 
was  elected  Mayor.  The  Nauvoo  Legion 
was  formed,  a  fine  body  of  soldiery  which 
eventually  grew  to  four  thousand  men — 
a  Mormon  army  in  the  guise  of  state  mil- 
itia, with  General  Smith  as  commander-in- 
chief .  The  Nauvoo  University  was  insti- 
tuted next.  A  fine  hotel  was  built,  in 
obedience  to  a  special  revelation,  in  which 
"my  servant  Joseph"  was  remembered  as 
always,  and  a  suite  of  rooms  ordered  to  be 
set  apart  for  him  and  his  forever.  Im- 
agine a  revelation  from  heaven  decreeing 
the  building  of  a  hotel,  and  giving  minute 
architectural  details!  Mormon  apolo- 
gists, of  course,  point  to  the  tabernacle  as 
a  precedent — for  Mormon  apologists  are 
quite  resourceful. 

The  year  1844  saw  Mormonism  strongly 
intrenched  in  Illinois,  with  Smith  at  the 
zenith  of  his  glory  and  power.  He  oc- 
cupied a  place  and  wielded  an  influence 
far  beyond  anything  his  own  high-fantas- 
tic imagination  had  ever  painted.  His 
wealth  was  estimated  at  a  million  dollars; 


NAUVOO   THE    BEAUTIFUL  49 

he  was  Pontifex  Maximus  of  a  great  and 
growing  church,  absolute  ruler  over  tem- 
poral and  spiritual  things;  hundreds  of 
missionaries  proclaimed  his  wisdom  and 
holiness  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  By 
his  enemies  he  was  envied  and  feared;  by 
the  politicians  of  both  great  parties  cod- 
dled and  courted.  No  wonder  his  vault- 
ing ambition  overleaped  itself! 

Clouds  began  to  gather  on  the  horizon. 
A  number  of  his  henchmen,  notably  John 
C.  Bennett,  were  alienated,  and  went 
forth  breathing  calumnies  against  the 
church,  calling  Nauvoo  a  modern  Sodom 
and  Smith  a  moral  leper.  Some  of  their 
charges  may  have  been  too  well  founded, 
for  it  is  almost  certain  that  the  revelation 
commanding  polygamy  had  now  been  de- 
livered, and  that  "spiritual  wifehood" 
was  flourishing.  At  the  last  dress  parade 
of  the  Nauvoo  Legion,  ten  of  Smith's  "ce- 
lestial wives"  took  part,  mounted  on  milk- 
white  chargers  and  arrayed  in  full  uni- 
form. Such  things  could  not  but  rouse 
bad  blood.  With  all  respect  due  to  Mor- 
mon virtues,  the  people  of  Illinois  were 
not  ready,  any  more  than  those  of  Mis- 
souri, to  brook  Mormon  vices . 

It  seems  that  among  the  failings  of  the 
early  Saints  was  a  fondness  for  their 
neighbors'  goods.  Elders  had  found  reve- 
lation a  very  convenient  path  to  prosper- 


50  MORMON    SAINTS 

ity;  a  believer  in  possession  of  a  gold 
watch  or  a  suit  of  clothes  could  ofttimes 
be  persuaded  to  turn  them  over  in  obedi- 
ence to  divine  injunction,  but  sometimes 
complained  because  the  revelations  never 
told  the  holy  men  to  share  their  gold 
watches  or  new  suits  with  any  one  else. 
Still  more  objectionable  was  the  literal  ac- 
ceptance of  the  words:  "Behold,  it  is  not 
said  at  any  time  that  the  Lord  should  not 
take  when  he  pleased,  and  pay  as  seemeth 
him  good ;  wherefore  as  ye  are  agents,  and 
ye  are  on  the  Lord's  errand,"  etc. — a  reve- 
lation given  in  Missouri  in  1831  to  miti- 
gate the  rigors  of  the  Eighth  Command- 
ment. 

"Milking  the  Gentiles" — a  cant  Mor- 
mon phrase  of  obvious  meaning — was 
practiced  till  ^the  Gentiles  were  incensed 
to  fury.  But  Mormons  controlled  the 
courts  round  about  Nauvoo,  and  could  not 
be  convicted  of  any  crime,  however  strong 
the  evidence. 

To  fan  opposition  into  active  hate  need- 
ed only  some  such  incident  as  occurred  in 
1843.  *  An  attempt  was  made  upon  the 
life  of  Gov.  L.  W.  Boggs,  of  Missouri;  a 
Mormon  was  the  would-be  assassin,  and 
Smith  was  charged  with  having  instigated 
the  deed.  A  requisition  was  issued  for 
the  Prophet  and  his  alleged  tool,  but  a  writ 
of  habeas  corpus  defeated  this  move.  The 


NAUVOO    THE    BEAUTIFUL  51 

case  was  finally  tried  in  the  Nauvoo  court, 
under  the  city's  liberal  and  comprehensive 
charter,  and  the  two  prisoners  were  tri- 
umphantly acquitted. 

The  ill-feeling  was  intensified  when 
Smith  announced  himself  as  a  candidate 
for  the  Presidency  in  1844 — an  act  that 
brought  ridicule  upon  him  and  the  church. 
His  address  to  the  voters  was  a  ludicrous 
hodge-podge  of  politics  and  religion ;  from 
which,  however,  he  may  be  regarded  as  the 
father  of  expansion,  as  he  advocated  the 
annexation  of  both  Canada  and  Mexico. 

With  each  day  the  arrogance  of  the 
Mormons  and  the  rage  of  their  enemies 
increased.  An  anti-Mormon  paper  was 
started  right  in  Nauvoo,  but  a  decree  of 
the  city  council  confiscated  and  destroyed 
the  printing  outfit.  Attempts  to  arrest 
Smith  came  to  naught,  as  he  stood  on  the 
impregnable  rock  of  the  Nauvoo  charter. 
At  last,  when  a  popular  uprising  against 
the  city  was  threatened,  Smith  surren- 
dered, and  was  lodged  in  the  jail  at  Car- 
thage. On  June  27,  1844,  a  fanatical  mob 
attacked  the  prison.  Unlike  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  who  rebuked  Peter  for  using  his 
sword,  the  Mormon  Prophet  had  two  six- 
shooters,  and  brought  down  four  of  his  as- 
sailants. After  a  hot  battle,  both  Joseph 
and  his  brother  Hyrum  were  shot  and 
killed — the  former  as  he  leaped  from  the 


52  MORMON    SAINTS 

window  attempting  to  escape.  "0  Lord, 
my  God  I"  were  his  last  words. 

Thus  the  long  comedy  closed  with  a  dark 
and  tragic  denouement.  The  "irrepres- 
sible conflict "  had  begun.  The  Saints 
saw  the  futility  of  resistance,  but  chose  to 
exile  themselves  rather  than  yield.  The 
temple,  which  was  to  have  cost  a  million 
dollars,  was  hurriedly  completed,  because 
Smith  had  prophesied  it  should  be;  but 
the  day  after  its  dedication  it  was  dis- 
mantled and  the  exodus  began.  The 
charter  of  Nauvoo  was  revoked  by  the  leg- 
islature; the  city  was  besieged  and  bom- 
barded by  a  mob ;  the  remnant  of  the  Pro- 
phet ?s  followers  was  driven  forth.  At 
Council  Bluffs,  Iowa,  they  caught  up  with 
the  advance-guard,  and  plodded  on  toward 
the  setting  sun. 

Beyond  the  borders  of  civilization,  the 
exiles  hoped  to  build  an  empire  of  their 
own,  untrammeled  by  conventional  moral- 
ity and  the  envy  of  the  orthodox  denomina- 
tions. They  would  claim  the  West  "for 
their  inheritance/'  Smith's  tragic  end 
really  gave  Mormonism  a  greater  impetus 
than  anything  else  could  have  done.  Per- 
secution always  furthers  the  cause  it  at- 
tacks; it  kindles  sympathy  in  fair-minded 
men,  stubborn  resistance  in  the  martyrs 
and  their  followers. 


TO   THE    PROMISED   LAND  53 


CHAPTER  VI 


To  the  Promised  Land 

The  blood  of  the  Smiths,  in  the  soil  of 
Utah,  then  a  part  of  Mexico,  became  the 
prolific  seed  of  a  mighty  church. 

Upper  California,  as  Utah  was  then 
called,  had  already  been  looked  toward  as 
an  ultimate  haven  in  Smith's  day.  The 
Saints,  overwhelmed  with  grief  at  their 
Prophet's  martyrdom,  were  ready  to  de- 
part from  the  land  of  oppression.  But 
a  city  can  not  be  moved  in  a  day.  The 
people  of  Illinois  disgraced  themselves  as 
had  those  of  Missouri,  and  the  hapless 
remnant  of  the  Mormons  was  driven 
forth  in  the  middle  of  winter,  their  homes 
pillaged  and  burned,  by  the  savage  big- 
otry of  their  Gentile  neighbors. 

A  firm  hand  seized  the  reins  that  fell 
from  Joseph  Smith's  lifeless  grasp.  Brig- 
ham  Young  showed  that  he  had  justly 
been  styled  "the  Lion  of  the  Lord."  This 
uncouth  man,  who  did  not  know  how  to 
spell  his  own  name,  and  began  it  with  a 
small  "y,"  had  in  him  the  qualities  that 
make  great  leaders — singleness  of  pur- 
pose, a  clear  head,  and  a  resolute  will.  He 
had  the  aggressive  energy  of  Luther,  the 


54  MORMON    SAINTS 

resourceful  fervor  of  Loyola.  He  was  the 
man  for  the  hour;  no  other  could  have 
saved  Mormonism  from  disintegration  in 
the  crisis  that  followed  its  leader's  fall. 

Much  as  he  has  been  maligned,  Brigham 
was  undoubtedly  sincere.  He  accepted 
the  Mormon  revelation  at  par;  while  an 
autocratic  spirit,  rising  from  his  exuber- 
ant vitality,  led  him  to  turn  all  things  to 
his  own  aggrandizement.  Not  versed  in 
the  subtleties  of  ethical  dialectics,  but 
holding  that  might  makes  right,  his  crude 
conscience  justified  any  means  by  the  end 
in  view.  With  ease  he  wrested  the  scepter 
of  Mormondom  from  Sidney  Eigdon,  who 
believed  himself  entitled  to  the  succession. 
Sidney  was  excommunicated,  and  deliv- 
ered unto  Satan  for  a  thousand  years. 
Smith's  erratic  rule  was  succeeded  by  a 
wise,  far-seeing,  and  eminently  practical 
policy,  administered  with  despotic  inflex- 
ibility, extending  alike  to  things  spiritual 
and  things  temporal.  ' '  Brickham  young ' ' 
became  Pope  and  Czar  in  one  person. 

With  wonderful  energy  and  generalship, 
Brigham  led  the  Saints'  hegira  to  the 
region  beyond  the  Eockies.  Fanatical 
faith  buoyed  up  the  spirits  of  the  exiles, 
steeling  them  for  the  wearisome  journey. 
Hardships  were  many,  but  on  the  far  hori- 
zon gleamed  the  star  of  hope.  They  plod- 
ded across  the  trackless  prairie — a  seem- 


TO    THE    PROMISED   LAND  55 

ingly  interminable  caravan.  There  were 
twelve  to  fifteen  thousand  men,  women  and 
children ;  over  three  thousand  ox-carts  and 
wagons;  thirty  thousand  head  of  cattle, 
horses  and  mules  in  great  number,  un- 
counted droves  of  sheep.  For  nigh  two 
years  this  pilgrimage  through  the  wilder- 
ness continued;  the  jolting  of  the  wagons 
being  used  to  churn  the  milk.  The  church 
had  no  place  of  fixed  abode;  still  the 
Saints,  shaken  with  ague  and  blistered 
with  fevers,  had  ever  before  their  eyes  the 
vision  of  the  new  city.  As  they  journeyed 
on  they  received  from  the  savage  Indians 
of  the  wilds  a  welcome  that  stood  in  glar- 
ing contrast  with  the  inhuman  treatment 
accorded  them  by  the  Christian  communi- 
ties they  had  left  behind.  "We  have  both 
suffered,"  said  a  Pottawattomie  chief; 
"we  must  help  each  other,  and  the  Great 
Spirit  will  help  us  both. ' ' 

A  pioneer  band  of  the  bravest  and  best 
men  was  sent  ahead  to  spy  out  the  land 
and  prepare  the  way.  The  romance  of 
Mormonism  was  not  yet  at  an  end.  Noth- 
ing in  Greek  myth  is  more  beautiful  than 
this  forlorn  hope  scattering  seeds  of  the 
sunflower  along  the  route,  so  that  the 
mighty  host  that  followed  was  shown  the 
way  by  patches  of  golden  bloom.  On  the 
twenty-second  day  of  July,  1847,  they  en- 
tered the  valley  where  they  founded  the 


56  MORMON    SAINTS 

\ '  City  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake. ' '  And  now, 
if  romance  had  not  fled,  there  also  was 
still  in  their  midst  the  saving  grace  of  hu- 
mor, which  had  made  the  history  of  Mor- 
monism  seem  almost  a  huge  joke  from  the 
first.  In  an  exhortation  to  the  Saints,  the 
Apostles  commanded  them  to  "bring  their 
gold,  their  silver,  their  copper,  their  zinc, 
their  tin,  and  brass,  and  iron,  and  choice 
steel,  and  ivory,  and  precious  stones/'  to 
adorn  the  new  Zion.  So  the  Saints  came, 
obedient  to  the  command,  and  fell  to  work 
pitching  rude  shelters,  splitting  logs,  hoe- 
ing corn,  and  planting  potatoes. 

Then  the  miracle  of  the  crickets  oc- 
curred, convincing  the  exiles  that  the  Lord 
had  been  their  guide.  Clouds  of  fierce  de- 
vouring insects  descended  upon  the  young 
crops.  And  it  came  to  pass  that  white 
gulls  fell  upon  the  crickets  and  devoured 
them.  This  incident  has  grown  into  an 
elaborate  myth,  though  naturalists  decline 
to  see  anything  supernatural  in  it.  Those 
gulls  were  always  numerous  about  the 
Great  Salt  Lake;  the  crops  attracted  the 
crickets,  and  the  crickets  attracted  the 
birds.  Naturalists  are  always  coming 
along  with  such  easy  explanations  to  spoil 
perfectly  good  miracles.  The  real  mir- 
acle, however,  was  the  perseverance  of  the 
Saints. 

Soon  the  " Great  American  Desert"  put 


TO   THE    PROMISED   LAND  67 

on  robes  of  fragrance.  At  first  grain  was 
scarce,  so  that  thistle-tops  were  eaten, 
soup-stock  was  made  by  boiling  the  hide 
roofs  of  houses,  and  the  beef  obtainable 
was  so  tough  that  they  had  to  grease  the 
saws  to  cut  it,  yet  faith  and  toil  won  the 
victory.  In  a  few  years  abundance  pre- 
vailed, leaving  leisure  for  the  amenities 
of  life.  A  great  university  was  projected 
in  1850;  a  new  alphabet  of  thirty-two 
letters  was  invented ;  a  library  was  found- 
ed, and  well  stocked  with  books  from  the 
East;  and  a  year  later  even  a  dramatic 
association  had  been  formed,  giving  cred- 
itable stage  entertainments.  In  1853  the 
corner-stone  of  another  new  temple  was 
laid,  amid  the  blare  of  brass  bands  and  the 
rodomontade  of  the  Apostles. 

The  community  throve  marvelously. 
That  they  were  governed  wisely  and  well 
is  proved  by  the  manner  in  which  Brigham 
Young  stamped  out  the  gold  fever  in  1849, 
when  many  wanted  to  migrate  to  the  Cali- 
fornia Ophir.  "If  we  were  to  go  and  dig 
up  chunks  of  gold,"  argued  Young,  "or 
find  it  in  our  valley,  it  would  ruin  us." 
Sound  statecraft — losing  some  of  its  point 
and  force  by  the  declaration  that  "the  true 
use  of  gold  is  for  paving  streets  and  cover- 
ing houses." 

Fresh  troubles  were  brewing.  The 
state  of  Deseret  was  organized — which 


58  MORMON 

means  the  land  of  the  honey-bee,  accord- 
ing to  the  Book  of  Mormon.  The  Mexican 
war  had  resulted  in  the  cession  of  Cali- 
fornia and  New  Mexico  to  the  Union.  Ne- 
vada and  Utah  then  formed  part  of  Cali- 
fornia, so  that  the  Mormons  again  had 
come  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  United 
States.  A  territorial  form  of  government 
was  extended  over  the  "  State  of  Deseret," 
and  Brigham  Young  was  appointed  gov- 
ernor. Ere  long  there  moved  into  the 
thriving  community  Gentiles,  who  would 
not  accept  as  final  the  judgments  of  Mor- 
mon courts,  presided  over  by  Mormon 
bishops.  Perhaps  they  were  justified  in 
this  attitude,  for  Brigham  Young  himself, 
in  the  patriarchal  role  of  supreme  judge, 
once  threatened  to  dismiss  the  whole  epis- 
copal bench,  with  the  words:  "You  are 
not  fit  to  decide  a  case  between  two  old 
women,  let  alone  two  men. ' ' 

The  troubles  were  aggravated  when 
polygamy  was  openly  promulgated  as  a 
plank  of  the  church  platform.  It  was  al- 
so charged  that  Brigham  had  converted  to 
his  own  use  moneys  appropriated  by  Con- 
gress for  government  buildings.  Other 
usurpations  and  abuses  of  various  kinds 
added  fuel  to  the  flame.  To  balance  the 
account,  many  of  the  judges  and  officials 
smt  to  the  territory  by  the  government  at 
Y,rashington  were  denounced  by  the  Mor- 


TO    THE    PROMISED    LAND  59 

mons  as  incompetent  and  unscrupulous  ad- 
venturers, to  whom  these  appointments 
had  fallen  as  crumbs  from  the  table  of  po- 
litical patronage.  As  if  the  fat  graft  were 
only  for  the  sleek  saint !  Finally  the  re- 
presentatives of  the  nation  were  driven 
out  of  the  state  by  the  exasperated  Mor- 
mons, and  Brigham  solemnly  declared 
that  if  others  like  them  were  sent,  they 
would  be  slain. 

Now  an  army  was  sent  to  Utah  to  put 
down  the  incipient  insurrection.  A  dra- 
matic climax  followed.  Brigham  pro- 
claimed martial  law,  assumed  the  role  of 
dictator,  and  the  Mormon  militia,  the  re- 
organized Nauvoo  Legion,  was  mobilized 
to  meet  the  troops  expected  to  re-establish 
the  Federal  supremacy. 


60  MORMON    SAINTS 


CHAPTER  VII 

Mormon  Beliefs  and  Practices 

While  the  hosts  of  the  "chosen  people" 
are  preparing  to  repel  the  "mercenary 
rabble"  sent  against  them  by  President 
Buchanan,  let  us  examine  the  peculiar  sys- 
tem of  government — almost  a  theocracy — 
which  held  that  people  together,  and  still 
obtains  among  them  to-day,  modified  along 
some  lines,  elaborated  along  others,  but 
essentially  the  same.  Also  let  us  consider 
those  virtues  that  have  made  them  great, 
those  peculiarities  that  have  brought  hate 
and  obloquy  upon  them — the  same  to-day 
as  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Mormon  War. 

The  church  polity  of  Mormonism  is  com- 
plex and  complete.  Its  hierarchy  includes 
dignitaries  enough  almost  to  exhaust  the 
English  tongue's  store  of  ecclesiastical  ti- 
tles. There  are  two  orders  of  priest- 
hood, the  Melchisedec  and  the  Aaronic; 
there  are  presidencies,  councils,  quorums, 
seventies,  and  stakes;  there  are  prophets, 
patriarchs,  apostles,  bishops,  elders,  dea- 
cons, teachers,  ad  infinitum.  About  a 
fifth  of  the  Mormon  men  hold  some 
churchly  office.  Their  organization  is  per- 
fect. Every  block  of  buildings  has  its 


BELIEFS    AND    PRACTICES  61 

teacher,  who  is  charged  not  only  with  keep- 
ing ablaze  the  religious  faith  of  those  un- 
der him,  but  is  also  their  mentor  in  secu- 
lar affairs — in  business,  in  politics,  in  do- 
mestic life.  He  is  father  confessor  and 
father  inquisitor  in  one,  and  is  amenable 
only  to  the  ward  bishop  to  whom  he  re- 
ports. The  w^ard  bishops  are  under  a  pre- 
siding bishop  for  the  whole  town.  He  in 
turn  derives  his  authority  from  the  "  First 
Presidency,"  consisting  of  the  Prophet 
and  two  Counselors,  who  direct  the  af- 
fairs of  the  entire  church . 

This  network  of  surveillance  and  super- 
intendence centering  in  the  supreme  head 
of  the  church,  this  concatenation  of  power 
radiating  from  the  spirit  of  absolute  and 
unquestioning  obedience  that  permeates 
the  whole  body,  moves  in  secular  affairs 
upon  principles  so  empiric  and  crude  that 
statesmen  would  stand  aghast  at  the  re- 
sults. Here  are  Poor  Eichard's  maxims 
welded  into  a  system  of  political  economy. 
"Laws,"  said  Brigham  Young,  " should 
be  simple  and  plain,  easy  to  be  compre- 
hended by  the  most  unlearned,  void  of  am- 
biguity, and  few  in  number."  There  is 
the  basis  of  Mormon  legislation.  "Pay 
your  tithes  and  mind  your  own  business," 
was  and  is  the  fundamental  rule  of  con- 
duct. "Produce  what  you  consume,"  is 
another  bit  of  homely  counsel  for  plain 


62  MORMON    SAINTS 

people;  "buy  no  article  from  the  stores 
that  you  can  do  without;  permit  no  viti- 
ated taste  to  lead  you  into  indulgence  of 
expensive  luxuries."  And  though  revela- 
tion had  exempted  Joseph  Smith  from  toil, 
the  church  pronounced  labor  to  be  honor- 
able, and  a  duty  no  less  than  prayer  or 
temple  service.  Brigham  Young  worked 
at  the  carpenter's  bench  in  his  own  mill. 
Charity  was  another  supreme  virtue,  and 
was  displayed  most  commendably  in  the 
treatment  of  the  broken-down  Argonauts 
of  '49,  who  were  first  fleeced  on  their  way 
to  the  coast. 

Eemarkable  also  was  the  attitude  of  the 
church  upon  the  questions  of  slavery,  tem- 
perance, and  woman  suffrage.  The  aboli- 
tionist utterances  of  some  Mormon  leaders 
had  much  to  do  with  the  rancor  aroused  in 
Missouri.  Among  the  hundred  and  forty- 
three  pioneers  who  entered  Utah  were  sev- 
eral negro  freemen.  And  while  Brigham 
held  slavery  to  be  a  divine  institution,  he 
also  believed  that  the  time  would  come 
when  "the  seed  of  Cain  should  be  redeem- 
ed"— according  to  tradition  the  negroes 
were  the  descendants  of  Cain,  and  their 
black  skin  the  mark  set  upon  him  by  God. 
The  Mormon  settlers  of  Utah  bought  In- 
dian slave  children,  but  only  to  prevent 
their  being  killed  by  their  captors. 

The  equal  rights  of  woman  were  always 


BELIEFS    AND    PRACTICES  63 

recognized;  the  ballot  belonged  to  inale 
and  female  alike.  The  territory  of  Utah 
affords  probably  "the  first  instance  in  the 
United  States  where  woman  suffrage  was 
permitted" — a  privilege  later  withdrawn 
before  statehood  could  be  obtained.  In- 
deed, the  Mormons  may  also  claim  to  have 
originated  the  "new  woman,"  as  King 
Strang,  who  ruled  an  island  colony  in  Lake 
Michigan,  published  an  ukase  which  made 
"bloomers"  obligatory,  provoking  a  re- 
bellion that  ended  in  his  downfall — not  the 
first  sovereign  to  trip  over  woman's  skirts. 

Temperance  and  sobriety  were  inculcat- 
ed from  the  start.  At  Far  West  and  Nau- 
voo  a  rigorous  prohibition  law  was  pro- 
mulgated— with  a  rather  incongruous 
amendment  reserving  to  Joseph  Smith  the 
sole  privilege  of  selling  liquor.  And 
among  the  earliest  enactments  at  Salt 
Lake  City  was  one  forbidding  the  sale  or 
use  of  ardent  spirits.  In  the  heart  of 
winter,  and  amid  the  horrors  of  the  en- 
forced hegira,  it  had  been  resolved  that 
"no  corn  should  be  made  into  whiskey, 
and  that  if  any  man  was  preparing  to  dis- 
till corn  into  whiskey,  or  alcohol,  the  corn 
should  be  taken  and  given  to  the  poor." 

These  homely  virtues  and  enlightened 
principles  of  public  policy  would  have 
made  any  people  great;  but  in  Mormon- 
ism  they  were  linked  with  beliefs  inherent- 


64  MORMON    SAINTS 

ly  so  absurd  and  practices  so  unconven- 
tional that  civilization  laughed  at  the 
former  and  strove  by  every  shift  of  di- 
plomacy or  force  to  uproot  the  other.  As 
a  fair  sample  of  the  ludicrous  may  be  in- 
stanced the  new  astronomy  which  was  to 
be  taught  in  the  Deseret  University,  and 
was  to  overturn  the  orthodox  theories  of 
science;  putting  the  sun,  the  great  orb 
Kolob,  into  the  center  of  the  universe,  let- 
ting it  rotate  once  in  a  thousand  years  and 
all  the  host  of  heaven  revolve  around  it, 
while  the  law  of  gravitation  was  entirely 
abolished.  For  was  it  not  so  written 
in  the  Book  of  Abraham? 

Mormon  theology  is  of  a  truth  fearfully 
and  wonderfully  made.  It  is  founded  up- 
on the  Book  of  Mormon,  modified  by  in- 
numerable later  revelations  vouchsafed 
unto  Smith,  Eigdon,  and  Young.  Accord- 
ing to  its  prime  tenets  there  is  one  chief 
God,  Jehovah,  who  has  three  persons ;  this 
supreme  God  has  a  wife,  a  female  deity; 
from  them  has  sprung  a  whole  pantheon 
of  minor  gods  and  goddesses,  besides 
angels  and  the  human  race. 

God  the  Father,  according  to  Joe  Smith, 
"has  a  body  of  flesh  and  bones  as  tangi- 
ble as  man's,"  According  to  Brigham 
Young,  "God  was  Adam,  and  Eve  was  one 
of  his  wives."  Mormon  apologists  do  not 
defend  this  doctrine,  but  it  was  certainly 


BELIEFS    AND    PRACTICES  65 

promulgated  by  Young  in  a  sermon 
preached  April  9,  1852,  and  is  just  as  au- 
thentic as  any  other  revelation  or  tenet  of 
Smith  and  his  successors.  According  to 
later  theologians,  the  supreme  God  has  in- 
deed the  form  of  a  man,  but  his  body  is 
composed  of  spiritual  matter —  that  is, 
matter  of  extreme  fineness.  He  resides 
in  the  center  of  the  universe,  near  the 
great  star  Kolob,  each  millennial  rotation 
of  which  marks  a  divine  day.  Jesus  was 
literally  the  son  of  God,  but  differs  from 
him  only  in  age  and  authority — seniority 
presides.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  matter  in 
its  most  rarified  form,  a  subtle  fluid,  like 
electricity,  filling  all  space. 

Heaven  is  partitioned  into  three  abodes 
—the  telestial  and  the  terrestrial,  for 
those  who  have  neither  accepted  nor  re- 
jected the  gospel;  and  the  celestial,  for 
those  who  believe  and  have  been  baptized. 
The  manner  of  baptism  is  by  immersion, 
infant  baptism  being  rejected.  Curious 
in  this  connection  is  the  doctrine  of  "bap- 
tism for  the  dead,"  according  to  which 
any  one,  believing  a  deceased  relative  to 
be  in  torment,  can  go  and  be  baptized  as 
his  prosy,  so  securing  his  admission  to 
the  realms  of  bliss.  These,  the  celestial 
heaven,  would  ultimately  be  established 
upon  earth,  when  the  great  white  throne 
would  stand  in  Jackson  county,  Missouri. 


66  MORMON    SAINTS 

All  who  accept  Joseph  Smith  as  the  Pro- 
phet of  the  Lord  will  there  reign  with 
Christ  for  a  thousand  years;  apostates, 
who  are  guilty  of  the  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost,  will  be  bound,  and  cast  into  the  pit 
with  Satan  and  his  angels.  Apropos  of 
which  it  may  be  remarked  that  the  Mor- 
mon leaders  frequently  and  with  the  ut- 
most sang-froid  consigned  people  to  To- 
phet  for  offenses  far  less  grievous  than 
the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost.  "Zach- 
ary  Taylor  is  dead  and  in  hell,  and  I  am 
glad  of  it,"  declared  Young,  because  of 
real  or  fancied  slights  put  upon  the  Mor- 
mons by  Taylor.  A  Federal  judge  sent 
to  the  territory  angrily  protested,  when 
the  leader  of  the  Saints  coolly  told  him  "he 
need  have  no  doubt  about  it,  for  he  would 
see  him  when  he  went  there  himself. ' ' 

Upon  this  melange  of  chiliastic  dreams 
and  calculating  invention,  communistic 
ideas  had  been  engrafted  from  the  start, 
and  later  toned  down  into  a  system  of  tith- 
ing when  they  failed  to  arouse  enthusiasm 
among  those  who  had  and  who  were  ex- 
pected to  impart  unto  those  who  had  not. 
The  system  of  tithing,  as  rigorously  en- 
forced, is  one  secret  of  the  church's  great 
power — it  provided  unlimited  sinews  of 
war,  which  the  leaders  never  scrupled  to 
use  in  the  most  effective  way.  "When  I 
put  my  hand  into  one  pocket,"  Brigham 


BELIEFS    AND    PRACTICES  67 

Young  is  credited  with  saying,  "I  put 
Congress  into  the  other."  Through  the 
tithing  system  millions  of  dollars  are  an- 
nually poured  into  the  coffers  of  the 
church. 

Strangest  among  the  many  curious  cere- 
monies of  the  church  is  that  of  "endow- 
ment"— a  sort  of  revival  of  heathen  mys- 
teries and  medieval  miracle-plays,  closely 
analogous  to  some  lodge  initiations.  Af- 
ter purification  and  anointing  with  oil,  a 
ritual  of  dramatic  hocus-pocus,  doubtless 
impressive  enough  to  the  simple-minded, 
is  gone  through;  blood-curdling  oaths  of 
fidelity  and  secrecy  are  imposed,  grips  are 
given,  and  the  neophyte  carries  home  his 
endowment  robe,  which  he  henceforth  re- 
gards as  his  most  precious  possession.  It 
is  supposed  to  shield  from  disease — a  the- 
ory hardly  harmonizing  with  the  fact  that 
every  devout  Mormon  is  buried  in  this 
garment.  It  is  even  claimed  to  be  bullet- 
proof, and  had  not  Joseph  Smith  neglected 
to  wear  his  on  the  day  he  was  mobbed  his 
enemies  could  not  have  harmed  him.  Cer- 
tainly this  was  inexcusable  carelessness  in 
a  Prophet,  who  must  have  known  they 
were  coming ! 

Two  leading  tenets  in  the  practical  the- 
ology of  the  church  have  roused  most  of 
the  opposition  it  has  met  almost  from  its 
earliest  day — polygamy,  which  will  be 


68  MORMON    SAINTS 

considered  in  a  later  chapter,  and  the 
atonement  of  blood.  According  to  this 
latter  doctrine,  there  are  certain  sins  that 
can  hope  for  no  pardon  upon  this  earth. 
Among  these  are  the  shedding  of  guiltless 
blood,  apostasy,  marital  infidelity  on  the 
wife's  part,  and  revealing  the  inner  work- 
ings of  the  Endowment  House.  Blood 
alone  can  atone  for  these  sins — and  the 
Mormons  did  their  best  to  make  the  atone- 
ment efficacious.  Said  Brigham  Young  in 
a  public  sermon:  "I  could  refer  you  to 
plenty  of  instances  where  men  have  been 
righteously  slain  in  order  to  atone  for 
sins.  I  have  seen  scores  and  hundreds  of 
people  for  whom  there  would  have  been  a 
chance  in  the  last  resurrection  if  their 
lives  had  been  taken  and  their  blood 
spilled  on  the  ground  as  a  smoking  incense 
to  the  Almighty."  Human  sacrifice,  for 
by  no  other  term  could  it  be  described,  was 
one  outgrowth  of  this  doctrine;  the  other 
development  was  plain  murder. 

To  carry  out  these  teachings,  worthy  of 
Thugs  or  Assassins,  a  secret  society  was 
formed,  sworn  to  support  the  head  of  the 
church  in  all  things.  They  were  called 
the  "Destroying  Angels,"  or  Danites — 
"Dan  shall  be  a  serpent  by  the  way,  an 
adder  in  the  path,  that  biteth  the  horse's 
heels,  so  that  his  rider  shall  fall  back- 
ward" (Genesis  49:17).  The  organization 


BELIEFS    AND    PRACTICES  69 

already  existed  while  the  Saints  were  in 
Missouri ;  to  this  there  is  ample  direct  tes- 
timony, apart  from  the  circumstantial  evi- 
dence in  the  attempt  to  assassinate  the 
Governor — indeed,  its  germ  may  be  found 
at  Kirtland,  in  1837,  when  one  Grandison 
Newell  charged  Smith  with  inciting  a 
young  Mormon  neophyte  to  take  his  life. 

Many  murders  were  charged  against 
this  Danite  brotherhood,  which  made  the 
Mormons  a  terror  to  their  neighbors.  No 
less  a  witness  than  the  Prophet's  own 
brother  declared  under  oath  that  before 
leaving  Nauvoo  fifteen  hundred  of  the 
Saints  "solemnly  swore,  in  the  presence 
of  Almighty  God  and  his  holy  angels,  that 
they  would  avenge  the  blood  of  Joseph 
Smith  upon  the  nation,  and  so  teach  their 
children;  and  that  they  would  henceforth 
and  forever  begin  and  carry  out  hostility 
against  this  nation,  and  keep  the  same  a 
profound  secret  now  and  forever."  This 
dogma,  born  of  the  spirit  of  revenge  in  the 
weak  and  oppressed,  made  their  later 
atrocities  seem  deeds  of  piety.  Its  tragic 
climax,  writ  large  in  blood,  will  be  nar- 
rated in  the  next  chapter. 


70  MORMON    SAINTS 


CHAPTER  VIII 


The  Mormon  War 

We  have  seen  the  Mormons,  weak  and 
long-suffering  under  persecution,  dissem- 
bling their  resentment,  at  worst  plotting 
revenge  in  secret.  Now  we  shall  see  them 
powerful  and  vindictive,  flinging  down  the 
gauntlet  of  defiance  to  a  great  nation. 
Their  legislature,  in  which  were  now  some 
astute  lawyers,  went  so  far  as  to  pass  one 
act  that  virtually  abrogated  the  entire 
body  of  the  English  Common  Law. 

Conquering  the  wilderness,  the  Mor- 
mons came  to  know  their  own  strength; 
now  they  were  ready  to  try  it  against  the 
mailed  fist  of  civilization.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  they  showed  themselves  su- 
perior, both  in  strategics  and  in  diplom- 
acy, to  the  trained  troops  and  leaders  sent 
against  them.  The  bloody  drama  of  se- 
cession, which  a  few  years  later  was  to  be 
enacted  upon  the  national  stage,  had  a 
prologue  upon  the  great  plateau  of  the 
West. 

President  Buchanan  deposed  Brigham 
Young  from  the  governorship,  which  was 
conferred  upon  Alfred  Gumming;  Judge 
Delana  R,  Eckels,  of  Indiana,  was  made 


THE   MORMON  WAR  71 

chief  justice  of  the  territory.  By  June 
of  1858  over  six  thousand  men  were  in 
Utah,  or  on  the  march,  to  re-establish  Fed- 
eral supremacy  and  maintain  the  author- 
ity of  the  Federal  courts. 

"Give  us  ten  years  of  peace, "  Brigham 
Young  had  said,  "and  we  will  ask  no  odds 
of  the  United  States."  He  had  foreseen 
this  conflict  when  his  people  entered  the 
valley.  Now  the  die  of  war  had  been  cast, 
and  the  crafty  old  leader  prepared  to  re- 
pel aggression  by  assuming  the  aggres- 
sive. His  assurance,  whether  genuine  or 
theatric,  was  marvelous.  In  an  immense 
convocation  of  his  people  he  announced 
that  at  no  distant  day  he  would  himself 
become  President  of  the  United  States,  or 
would  bestow  the  office  upon  whomsoever 
he  choose.  His  own  courage  inspired  his 
followers ;  there  was  a  fury  of  preparation 
for  the  conflict;  every  house  was  turned 
into  an  armory  and  arsenal.  Fierce  de- 
termination glowed  in  every  heart.  Dur- 
ing divine  service  at  the  tabernacle,  soon 
after  the  approach  of  the  troops  was  an- 
nounced, an  apostle  asked  all  to  raise  their 
hands  who  would  burn  down  their  homes, 
fell  the  trees,  and  lay  waste  the  fields,  if 
the  foemen  entered  the  valley.  Over  four 
thousand  were  in  that  congregation — and 
every  hand  was  raised.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  the  United  States  army,  if  it  had 


72  MORMON    SAINTS 

forced  the  passes  of  the  mountains  and 
marched  upon  Salt  Lake  City,  would  have 
found  a  smouldering  Moscow  in  a  howling 
wilderness. 

The  Mormons  at  once  inaugurated  ef- 
fective guerrilla  warfare.  They  captured 
or  destroyed  the  supply-trains  of  the  in- 
vading army,  stampeded  their  cattle, 
burnt  every  available  shelter  on  the  line 
of  advance.  The  army  went  into  winter 
quarters  destitute  and  discouraged — al- 
most justifying  the  contemptuous  hyper- 
bole of  an  elder:  "A  swarm  of  long- 
billed  mosquitoes  could  eat  them  up  at  a 
supper  spell."  While  harmony  and  pa- 
triotic self-sacrifice  prevailed  at  Salt  Lake 
City,  factions  were  snarling  at  each 
other's  heels  in  Washington,  and  unani- 
mity was  present  only  among  the  horde 
of  contractors  who  fleeced  the  government 
by  furnishing  the  army  wretched  supplies 
at  exorbitant  prices,  as  in  every  war. 
Flour,  for  instance,  cost  the  trifle  of  $570 
a  ton. 

The  ending  of  the  Mormon  War  was  not 
creditable  to  the  United  States.  Presi- 
dent Buchanan  has  been  described  by  a 
fair  historian  as  "not  at  heart  an  unjust 
man,"  but  he  "lacked  the  requisite  back- 
bone." His  messages  were  filled  with 
noble  phrases,  but  he  wavered  and  hesi- 
tated, and  usually  in  the  end  compromised 


THE   MORMON  WAR  78 

with  evil.  That  is  what  he  did  in  the 
Mormon  muddle,  in  which  he  lost  interest 
after  he  had  set  his  headstrong  will  upon 
putting  the  vicious  Lecompton  constitu- 
tion through  to  browbeat  Kansas.  While 
the  Federal  forces  sent  to  Utah  were  still 
hibernating  near  Fort  Bridger,  Col. 
Thomas  L.  Kane,  a  Pennsylvanian,  friend- 
ly to  the  Mormons  and  perhaps  a  secret 
agent  or  lobbyist  of  Brigham  Young's,  was 
sent  by  the  President  with  the  olive- 
branch  of  peace.  Kane  reached  Utah  by 
way  of  California,  and  succeeded  in  his 
mission  of  conciliation.  The  Mormons 
nominally  submitted,  and  an  escort  of 
their  militia  conducted  the  new  governor 
to  the  state  capital,  where  his  authority 
was  acknowledged.  Amnesty  was  grant- 
ed the  Saints,  and  the  troops  marched  in- 
to Salt  Lake  City,  which  was  deserted  by 
its  thirty  thousand  inhabitants,  save  for  a 
resolute  little  handful  who  were  to  apply 
the  torch  if  the  military  took  possession. 
Governor  Gumming  followed  the  fleeing 
Saints,  who  had  already  decided  to  emi- 
grate to  Sonora,  and  prevailed  upon  them 
to  return.  For  several  years  the  soldiers 
were  quartered  within  forty  miles  of  the 
town,  but  no  further  trouble  arose.  The 
sport  had  cost  the  nation  over  fifteen  mil- 
lions of  dollars,  and  nothing  had  been 
gained. 


74  MORMON    SAINTS 

At  the  beginning  of  this  "war"  oc- 
curred the  horrible  Mountain  Meadows 
massacre.  It  was  the  logical  outcome  of 
the  Blood  Atonement  doctrine,  and  there 
is  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  that  it  was  in- 
stigated by  leading  Mormons  and  execut- 
ed by  men  of  the  Nauvoo  Legion  and  In- 
dian allies  of  the  Saints.  Parley  Pratt, 
one  of  the  Apostles,  the  man  who  had 
"converted"  Sidney  Eigdon,  had  been 
killed  by  a  man  whose  wife  Pratt  had 
lured  into  his  harem.  "Innocent  blood" 
cried  to  heaven  for  vengeance.  The  op- 
portunity soon  offered  itself.  Pratt 's 
slayer  was  from  Arkansas,  and  now  an 
Arkansan  emigrant  train  was  crossing 
Utah.  The  killing  of  Pratt  was  expiated 
by  those  hapless  home-seekers,  of  whom 
probably  none  had  ever  heard  of  Pratt. 
Mormon  scouts  on  fleet  horses  sped  in  ad- 
vance of  the  train,  and  warned  the  Saints 
along  the  route  not  to  furnish  the  emi- 
grants food  nor  afford  them  shelter.  The 
company  would  have  died  of  starvation  in 
the  midst  of  abundance,  had  not  the  bul- 
lets of  the  Danite  avengers  cut  them  off. 
A  hundred  and  twenty-seven  men,  women, 
and  children  perished  in  that  slaughter. 
The  bodies  were  left  unburied,  a  prey 
to  the  coyotes.  A  Mormon,  moved  by 
pity,  buried  some  of  the  bleached  bones 


THE    MORMON   WAR  75 

long  after,  and  is  said  to  have  been  ex- 
communicated for  his  act. 

Now  comes  the  astounding  sequel.  In 
those  courts  whose  authority  had  just 
been  established  by  the  strong  hand  of  the 
United  States,  it  was  impossible  to  secure 
the  punishment  of  the  men  who  were 
guilty  of  this  crime.  Despite  evidence  of 
the  strongest  kind,  a  Mormon  grand  jury 
would  not  find  bills  against  any  man  ac- 
cused, and  was  discharged  by  a  disgusted 
judge  as  "a  useless  appendage  to  a  court 
of  justice. "  Some  suspected  ones  were 
later  arrested  on  bench-warrants,  which 
caused  a  general  stampede  of  prominent 
Mormons  to  the  mountains — strong  pre- 
sumptive evidence  of  uneasy  consciences. 
Eighteen  years  after  the  massacre,  a 
single  one  of  the  leaders  was  executed; 
Bishop  John  D.  Lee  was  made  the  scape- 
goat— the  remainder,  and  the  church,  went 
scot-free — though  direct  and  circumstan- 
tial evidence  of  their  complicity  was  not 
wanting,  even  reaching  to  Young. 

We  have  seen  the  Mormon  war  closed 
by  an  armed  truce.  Another  war — a  po- 
litical struggle — was  to  be  carried  for- 
ward to  a  triumphant  ending  by  the  astute 
Saints.  The  struggle  for  statehood  was 
never  relaxed  one  moment  until  the  goal 
had  been  attained . 


76  MORMON    SAINTS 


CHAPTER  IX 


In  Solomon's  Footsteps. 

The  institution  which  for  years  formed 
the  impassable  barrier  to  Utah's  admit- 
tance into  the  sisterhood  of  states — an  in- 
stitution that  seems  interwoven  with  the 
very  texture  of  the  church — was  polygamy. 

It  will  surprise  many  people  to  learn 
that  the  Book  of  Mormon  in  the  plainest 
terms  forbids  polygamy.  Scripture  itself 
is  silent  upon  this  point;  but  Joseph 
Smith's  Bible  has  an  explicit  prohibition 
that  can  not  be  equivocated  away  by  any 
sophistry  of  exegetics.  Here  are  the 
words : 

"And  were  it  not  that  I  must  speak  unto  you  concern- 
ing a  grosser  crime,  my  heart  would  rejoice  exceedingly. 
*  *  *  For  behold,  thus  saith  the  Lord,  This  people 
begin  to  wax  in  iniquity;  they  understand  not  the 
Scriptures.  *  *  *  David  and  Solomon  truly  had 
many  wives  and  concubines,  which  thing  was  abominable 
before  me,  saith  the  Lord.  *  *  *  Wherefore,  my 
brethren,  hear  me,  and  hearken  to  the  word  of  the  Lord; 
for  there  shall  not  any  man  among  you  have  save  it 
be  one  wife,  and  concubines  he  shall  have  none;  for  I, 
the  Lord  God,  delight  in  the  chastity  of  women." 

This  passage  shows  that  a  multiplicity 


IN   SOLOMON'S   FOOTSTEPS  77 

of  wives  formed  no  part  of  the  Prophet's 
original  scheme.  Indeed,  in  the  early 
days  of  his  career  he  found  it  difficult 
enough  to  support  a  single  wife,  much  less 
a  harem  of  forty,  as  was  charged  against 
him  later.  John  Hyde,  one  of  the  few 
apostates  who  spoke  with  fairness  of  the 
church  after  seceding,  said  "  polygamy 
was  not  the  result  of  Smith's  policy,  but 
of  his  passions."  It  was  the  affluence  and 
the  opportunities  of  Nauvoo  days  that  led 
him  into  the  "grosser  crime;"  an  idle  and 
luxurious  mode  of  life,  two  hundred  and 
twenty  pounds  of  "too  too  solid  flesh" — 
these  wrought  the  Prophet's  fall  from 
grace. 

There  is  ample  evidence  of  immoralities 
practiced  by  Smith  and  others  at  Nauvoo, 
and  perhaps  earlier,  which  gradually 
transpired,  and  made  necessary  the  "spe- 
cial revelation"  given  in  1843,  sanction- 
ing and  commanding  a  plurality  of  wives. 
For  nine  years  that  revelation  was  kept 
secret,  and  the  practice  was  publicly  de- 
nied— partly  because  Illinois  had  laws 
to  punish  bigamy,  but  chiefly  in  order  that 
proselyting  might  not  be  hampered.  Not 
until  1852,  Young  at  Salt  Lake  City  offi- 
cially proclaimed  the  doctrine,  and  ever 
since  it  has  been  a  cardinal  tenet  of  the 
church,  which  simultaneously  made  the 
startling  discovery  that  "Jesus  had  sev- 


78  MORMON    SAINTS 

eral  wives,  among  them  Mary  and  Martha, 
the  sisters  of  Lazarus. ' ? 

Simple  polygamy  was  not  broad  enough 
for  these  peculiar  Saints,  so  they  invented 
that  doctrine  of  celestial  ensealment  which 
made  Mormonism  almost  a  revival  of  the 
obscene  cult  of  the  Babylonian  Mylitta. 
The  practical  application  of  the  doctrine 
meant  sexual  promiscuity  under  the  sanc- 
tion of  the  church.  A  man  might  wed  as 
many  "spiritual"  wives  as  he  could  per- 
suade to  enter  into  that  relation  with  him 
— while  they  might  at  the  same  time  be  the 
temporal  wives  of  other  men.  A  woman 
might  have  any  number  of  "celestial"  hus- 
bands— that  is,  she  could  be  "sealed"  to 
some  dead  person,  who  had  an  earthly 
proxy,  with  all  marital  rights,  save  that 
the  children  born  were  credited  to  the 
Saint  in  heaven.  The  workings  of  this 
system  can  not  be  fully  comprehended  by 
the  Gentile  world — they  formed  part  of  the 
secrets  of  the  Endowment  House,  whose 
precincts  might  not  be  entered  by  the  pro- 
fane. But  enough  is  known  to  make  it 
clear  that  "any  one  of  either  sex  can  be 
sealed  to  any  number  of  persons  of  the  op- 
posite sex,  whether  married  or  single." 

The  Eeorganized  Church,  a  protesting 
sect  which  sprang  up  in  repudiation  of 
Brigham  Young,  never  countenanced  poly- 
gamy, but  numbers  only  about  50,000  ad- 


IN   SOLOMON'S  FOOTSTEP^  79 

herents.  The  orthodox  Saints  defended 
polygamy  by  an  elaborate  line  of  argu- 
ment, the  salient  points  of  which  were  as 
follows:  If  it  is  not  wrong  to  have  one 
wife,  why  should  the  possession  of  two,  or 
a  score,  be  stigmatized  as  a  crime  ?  Abra- 
ham, Isaac,  Jacob,  Moses,  David,  and 
Solomon  had  many  wives  and  concubines, 
and  it  was  accounted  unto  them  for  right- 
eousness— nowhere  in  the  Bible  is  there  a 
word  of  disapproval.  Besides,  according 
to  Mormon  theology,  all  space  is  peopled 
with  spirits  awaiting  incarnation;  unless 
there  is  plural  marriage  these  spirits  can 
not  all  be  supplied  with  human  bodies  to 
join  the  ranks  of  the  saints  on  earth,  and 
so  attain  to  salvation.  Such  are  the  scrip- 
tural and  theological  warrants  for  the 
practice ;  no  less  importance  is  attached  to 
the  argument  based  upon  the  experience  of 
mankind  and  the  constitution  of  human  so- 
ciety. Statistics  will  prove  that  there  are 
many  more  women  than  men;  so,  unless 
there  is  plural  marriage,  many  women 
must  perforce  remain  unmarried.  Mono- 
gamy, it  is  further  claimed,  makes  the  one 
wife  more  truly  the  slave  of  her  husband 
than  are  the  many  wives  of  the  polygam- 
ist;  it  promotes  licentiousness  and  fosters 
prostitution ;  and  finally,  it  exists  in  name 
only,  for  among  the  professedly  mono- 
gamic  communities  practical  polygamy  is 


80  MORMON    SAINTS 

just  as  common  as  among  the  openly 
polygamous. 

These  plausible  contentions  may  not  be 
lightly  dismissed.  Let  us  analyze  them  in 
detail. 

Admitted,  that  if  it  is  not  wrong  for  a 
man  to  have  one  wife,  it  can  not  be  wrong 
for  him  to  have  a  dozen.  The  same  premi- 
ses lead  to  the  conclusion  that  if  it  is  not 
wrong  for  a  woman  to  have  one  husband, 
it  can  not  be  wrong  for  her  to  have  a  dozen. 
This  the  polygamous  oracle — who  is  a 
man,  mark  you — makes  haste  indignantly 
to  deny.  But  if  we  admit  that  woman  is 
man's  equal — something  more  than  a  slave 
to  minister  to  his  appetites,  or  a  beast  of 
burden  to  work  in  his  fields — then  she  has 
just  as  strong  a  claim  upon  the  undivided 
affections  and  attentions  of  her  husband 
as  he  has  upon  her  love  and  care. 

The  Bible  does  not  directly  interdict 
polygamy — true.  It  will  also  be  difficult 
to  find  in  it  any  "Thou  shalt  not"  leveled 
against  arson,  gambling,  and  many  other 
offenses  against  society.  These  have  be- 
come crimes  only  by  the  evolution  of  a 
complex  society.  There  is  no  inherent 
wrong  in  setting  fire  to  one's  barn,  provid- 
ed it  entails  no  injury,  direct  or  indirect, 
upon  any  one  else — neighbors,  heirs,  in- 
surance company.  There  is  no  essential 
wrong  in  carrying  goods  across  a  coun- 


IN   SOLOMON'S   FOOTSTEPS  81 

try's  border,  provided  you  do  not  thereby 
evade  paying  your  fair  proportion  of  the 
expense  of  government,  and  so  increase  the 
proportion  others  must  pay.  There  could 
be  no  valid  objection  against  polygamy, 
if  it  might  be  harmonized  with  the  Golden 
Rule.  A  man  might  have  ten  wives,  pro- 
vided he  could  show  that  he  loves  each  with 
his  w^hole  heart,  as  he  demands  that  she 
love  him ;  and  provided  he  accords  to  each 
the  privilege  of  espousing  ten  husbands. 
Nor  does  his  duty  end  there.  He  must 
show  that  he  can  fulfill  all  his  parental  ob- 
ligations springing  from  each  of  the  ten 
unions;  clothe,  feed,  educate  the  offspring 
of  all  as  he  could  that  of  each  one.  He 
must  show  that  his  conduct  does  not  work 
injustice  or  injury  to  any  individual  nor 
to  society.  But  polygamy  is  convicted  of 
the  grossest  injustice  at  the  outset — it  re- 
gards the  wife  as  a  possession  of  the  hus- 
band, as  his  inferior;  it  is  a  relic  of  the 
ages  when  women  were  chattels,  spoil  of 
war,  beasts  of  burden.  It  rears  a  swarm 
of  children  unloved,  uncared  for,  untaught. 
For  the  home  it  substitutes  the  harem. 
It  puts  the  wife  beneath  the  husband's 
heel,  not  at  his  side. 

As  for  the  spirits  awaiting  incarnation, 
it  may  be  just  as  well  to  let  them  wait.  In 
the  absence  of  reliable  statistics  from 
Mormon  writers  as  to  the  precise  number 


82  MORMON    SAINTS 

of  those  spirits,  there  is  reason  to  fear  that 
under  Mormon  practice  the  supply  of 
spirits  might  run  short.  A  dire  contin- 
gency! In  point  of  fact,  this  Buddhist 
speculation,  revamped  into  a  Mormon  dog- 
ma, requires  to  be  proved  before  it  may 
demand  to  be  refuted. 

The  sociological  arguments  are  of  the 
flimsiest  texture.  If  women  are  more 
numerous  than  men,  the  greater  number 
of  births  under  polygamy  would  increase 
the  disproportion  in  the  same  ratio. 
Whether  the  one  wife  of  the  monogamist 
is  his  slave  may  be  left  to  the  sound  sense 
and  conscience  of  any  monogamist  who 
has  them.  To  say,  further,  that  mono- 
gamy promotes  licentiousness  and  fosters 
prostitution  is  equivalent  to  asserting  that 
polygamy  tends  to  abolish  them.  Does 
it?  Or  does  it  simply  cloak  them  under 
legalism?  If  we  admit  that  practical 
polygamy  exists  in  monogamic  communi- 
ties, it  can  not  be  gainsaid  that  it  is  every- 
where regarded  as  an  evil  to  be  con- 
demn^d  and  eradicated,  rather  than  as  an 
ideal  state  of  society  to  be  desired  and 
promoted. 

To  sum  it  up — polygamy  may  nominally 
diminish  crime  by  legalizing  it;  but  it 
practically  increases  it  by  making  it  safe 
and  respectable.  There  were  reported  to 
be  fifteen  thousand  polygamists  in  UtaJi — 


IN   SOLOMON'S   FOOTSTEPS  83 

with  a  population  of  about  300,000.  Will 
any  one  venture  to  affirm  that  there  were 
fifteen  thousand  adulterous  husbands  in 
the  District  of  Columbia,  which  had  ap- 
proximately the  same  population? 

But  polygamy  was  not  all  the  sin  of 
Mormonism.  It  is  a  fact,  a  logical  conse- 
quence of  the  doctrine  of  "spiritual  en- 
sealment,"  that  Mormonism  was  polyan- 
drous  as  well  as  polygamous.  It  meant 
practical  promiscuity — and  that,  even  in 
the  narrower  forms  of  polygamy  or  poly- 
andry, and  considered  apart  from  the  men- 
tal, moral  and  physical  deterioration  it  in- 
evitably brings  upon  the  race,  is  destruc- 
tive of  the  home  and  the  family,  the  bases 
of  individual  character  and  of  national 
greatness.  Islam  affords  an  illustration 
of  this.  The  institution  of  polygamy  en- 
abled the  Mahometan  tribes  rapidly  to 
overrun  and  conquer  a  vast  stretch  of  ter- 
ritory ;  but  within  two  centuries  it  had  sap- 
ped the  vigor  of  those  races,  and  the  colos- 
sal fabric  of  their  empire  slowly  crumbled 
into  ruin.  No  polygamous  nation  is  at 
this  day  a  factor  in  the  world's  progress. 
Turkey,  Persia,  and  China  are  political 
ciphers. 

A  people's  greatness  is  built  upon  its 
homes,  and  the  family  is  the  nation  in 
miniature.  Home  is  a  kingdom  where  love 
is  the  supreme  law — the  love  of  the  one 


84  MORMON    SAINTS 

man  for  the  one  woman,  of  the  one  woman 
for  the  one  man.  From  this  close  union 
of  interests  and  affections,  this  loss  of  self 
and  intermingling  of  two  lives,  spring  the 
highest,  holiest  ideals  that  human  kind  has 
ever  known.  Only  from  such  homes,  only 
from  the  nurture  of  such  parents,  only  out 
of  the  sunshine  of  such  ideals,  can  issue 
men  and  women  great  and  strong  to  do 
the  work  of  coming  time.  Without  such 
men  and  women  the  Eepublic  is  doomed, 
and  the  Capitol,  like  the  Alhambra,  will 
be  to  coming  ages  only  a  melancholy  relic 
of  a  ruined  race. 


SCHEMING   FOR   STATEHOOD  85 


CHAPTER  X 


Scheming  for  Statehood 

After  the  collapse  at  Nauvoo,  the 
shrewd  and  far-sighted  man  upon  whom 
had  fallen  the  mantle  of  "  Prophet  of  the 
Lord"  realized  that  it  was  not  enough  for 
Mormonism  to  have  its  city;  it  must  have 
a  holy  land  all  its  own — not  merely 
a  Jerusalem,  but  a  Canaan.  So,  as  soon 
as  the  region  where  they  settled  had  be- 
come, through  the  Mexican  war,  a  part  of 
the  Union,  independent  statehood  was  ever 
kept  in  view  by  the  Mormon  leaders.  The 
shadowy  state  of  Deseret  was  organized, 
but  Congress  refused  to  recognize  it,  and 
a  territorial  form  of  government  was  ex- 
tended over  the  aspiring  commonwealth, 
which  was  called  Utah. 

The  Mormons  that  were  driven  from 
Illinois  to  Utah  had  no  very  kindly  feel- 
ings toward  the  United  States.  "There's 
that  d — d  flag  again, "  cried  an  elder  at 
landing  in  California  after  a  trip  around 
the  Horn.  But  persistent  agitation  and 
scheming  now  began,  to  obtain  the  state- 
hood that  was  so  essential  to  the  stability 
and  growth  of  the  church.  As  long*  as 
Utah  remained  a  territory,  Mormonism 


86  MORMON    SAINTS 

and  its  leaders  would  be  under  Federal 
tutelage  and  jurisdiction.  Utah's  admis- 
sion to  the  sisterhood  of  states,  with  home 
rule,  with  voice  and  vote  in  the  councils  of 
the  nation,  would  make  the  church  impreg- 
nable. So  statehood  must  be  attained  at 
whatever  price.  And  the  Mormons  never 
hesitated  at  any  means  to  achieve  that  end. 
When  might  did  not  avail,  recourse  was 
had  to  meekness.  Where  steel  proved  in- 
effective, gold  was  used.  After  braggado- 
cio failed,  systematic  deception  was  in- 
augurated, and  the  remarkable  spectacle 
presented  to  the  world  of  a  great  commu- 
nity playing  as  one  man  the  role  of  the 
hypocrite.  From  the  first  memorial  to  the 
last  lobby,  their  diplomatic  battle  for 
statehood  was  never  relaxed  till  victory 
was  won. 

The  insuperable  obstacle  to  Utah's  ad- 
mission was  the  institution  of  polygamy. 
States  had  been  admitted  with  less  popu- 
lation— but  public  sentiment  would  not 
permit  an  action  that  would  make  the  gov- 
ernment practically  powerless  in  the 
presence  of  an  offense  against  society.  An 
application  for  statehood  in  1862  was  not 
only  refused,  but  a  stringent  law  against 
polygamy  in  any  of  the  territories  was  en- 
acted. Nor  did  the  intemperate  utter- 
ances of  prominent  Saints  tend  to  improve 
the  status  of  affairs. 


SCHEMING   FOR   STATEHOOD  87 

It  soon  became  evident  that  different 
tactics  must  be  adopted ;  the  country  must 
be  conciliated,  and  public  feeling  lulled. 
Effusive  loyalty  was  counterfeited;  the 
unpatriotic  utterances  of  over-zealous 
elders  were  carefully  suppressed,  and 
those  who  made  them  cautioned.  Even 
this  availed  nothing — as  long  as  the 
Saints  upheld  and  practiced  polygamy,  no 
political  party  dared  open  the  door  to 
them;  and,  as  Lorenzo  Snow,  later  presi- 
dent of  the  church,  declared,  they  would 
die  a  thousand  deaths  sooner  than  give 
up  this  article  of  their  creed.  Movements 
on  the  government's  part  to  suppress  the 
evil  were  met  with  passionate  memorials, 
affirming  that  the  church  would  obey  God 
rather  than  man.  Judicial  procedures  to 
enforce  existing  acts  were  quashed,  or 
were  too  spasmodic  to  be  of  any  effect ;  if 
it  came  to  a  trial,  this  was  usually  a  par- 
ody upon  justice.  Each  party  was  afraid 
of  the  other ;  the  representatives  of  the  na- 
tion feared  to  provoke  the  Saints,  while 
these  did  not  dare  openly  to  defy  the  na- 
tion. 

In  August  of  1877  Brigham  Young  died, 
leaving  seventeen  wives,  fifty-six  children, 
and  an  estate  valued  at  $2,000,000.  John 
Taylor,  who  had  been  in  Carthage  jail  and 
was  wounded  by  the  mob  that  killed  Jos- 
eph Smith,  succeeded  to  the  presidency  of 


88  MORMON    SAINTS 

the  church.  Under  Taylor's  regime  the 
troubles  of  the  Saints  multiplied.  He  had 
not  the  astute  mastery,  the  intuitive  knowl- 
edge of  men,  which  distinguished  Young. 
Whereas  Young  had  been  able  to  maintain 
the  "divine"  institution  of  polygamy  de- 
spite Gentile  persecution,  the  church  was 
now  hard  pressed  by  its  foes.  Still,  with 
fanatical  tenacity,  they  held  on  to  this  re- 
pugnant tenet.  Sooner  than  surrender  it, 
one  colony  emigrated  to  Mexico,  where 
they  founded  a  settlement  now  prosperous 
and  growing;  another  host  invaded  Cana- 
da, and  gained  a  firm  foothold  there.  The 
leaders  of  the  hierarchy,  who  could  not  or 
would  not  leave  Utah,  had  to  take  to  the 
mountains,  or  live  in  concealment,  until 
the  day  of  tribulation  should  be  past.  It 
is  told  of  Wilford  Woodruff,  the  Presi- 
dent-Prophet who  succeeded  Taylor,  that 
while  hiding  from  the  officers  of  the  law 
he  cut  a  field  of  grain  by  moonlight  with  a 
hand-sickle,  beginning  in  the  middle  of  the 
field  and  working  outward,  cutting  all  but 
the  outer  waving  walls  that  hid  him. 
Such  was  the  unbending  spirit  and  un- 
wearying energy  of  those  men. 

Persecutions  thickened — indeed,  the  na- 
tional government  stepped  very  close  to 
the  bounds  of  constitutional  authority  in 
its  repressive  measures.  The  Edmunds  act 
of  1882  resulted  in  the  disfranchisement  of 


SCHEMING   FOR   STATEHOOD  89 

twelve  thousand  polygamists  within  two 
years.  It  was  even  proposed  to  abolish 
the  legislature,  and  govern  Utah  by  a  com- 
mission appointed  by  the  President.  New 
applications  for  statehood  were  turned 
down;  appeals  to  the  Supreme  Court  re- 
sulted in  nothing.  Many  Saints  were  cast 
into  prison — principally  on  charges  of  il- 
legal cohabitation,  for  polygamy,  owing  to 
the  secrecy  of  the  marriage  rites,  could 
rarely  be  proved;  still  the  practice  contin- 
ued unabated,  hiding  from  the  world's  eye 
in  the  cloistered  chambers  of  Temple  and 
Endowment  House. 

Then  came  the  draconian  Edmunds- 
Tucker  act  of  1887.  Vast  possessions  of 
the  church  were  escheated.  Congress 
took  the  right  of  suffrage  away  from  wo- 
men, who,  strangely  enough,  through  their 
implicit  obedience  to  the  priesthood,  had 
for  seventeen  years  formed  the  mightiest 
bulwark  of  polygamy.  Then  followed  a 
proposition,  which  passed  both  houses  of 
Congress  in  1890,  to  disfranchise  all  Mor- 
mons, whether  polygamists  or  not,  as  Ida- 
ho already  had  done. 

In  this  crisis  the  change  of  policy  was 
adopted  which  saved  the  church  from  dis- 
integration and  gained  statehood  for  Utah. 
Stubborn  force  had  failed ;  resort  was  now 
had  to  hypocrisy  and  fraud.  Prophet  Wil- 
ford  Woodruff  had  a  revelation  as  oppor- 


90  MORMON    SAINTS 

tune  as  any  that  ever  came  to  Smith.  In 
a  petition  to  the  President,  asking  for  par- 
don and  restoration  of  the  franchise  to 
the  convicted  polygamists,  the  statement 
was  made  that  "in  September^  1890,  the 
present  head  of  the  church,  in  anguish  and 
prayer,  cried  to  God  for  help  for  his  flock, 
and  received  permission  to  advise  the 
members  of  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  of 
Latter-Day  Saints  that  the  law  command- 
ing polygamy  was  henceforth  suspended." 
Suspended  for  how  long? 

The  hypocritical  game  was  played  with 
consummate  cunning.  Accounts  were 
published  abroad  of  the  disfavor  with 
which  polygamy  was  now  viewed,  and  of 
its  decline;  prominent  Mormons  denoun- 
ced it;  a  plank  against  it,  formulated  by 
Mormons,  was  adopted  by  a  territorial 
convention;  a  prohibition  of  it  was  even 
suggested  as  an  amendment  to  the  consti- 
tution of  the  United  States. 

At  the  same  time  the  Mormons  suddenly 
became  Eepublicans  and  Democrats,  the 
old  People's  party  of  the  church,  opposed 
to  the  Liberal  party  of  the  Gentiles,  being 
abandoned.  It  was  hinted,  even  bluntly 
promised,  that  whichever  party  gave  Utah 
statehood  would  receive  its  electoral  vote 
and  its  congressional  and  senatorial  sup- 
port. The  ruse  succeeded  completely. 
President  Harrison  extended  amnestv  to 


SCHEMING   FOR   STATEHOOD  91 

polygamists,  and  then,  under  Cleveland's 
administration,  on  the  first  day  of  Janu- 
ary, 1896,  Utah  became  a  state,  after  hav- 
ing been  refused  admittance  six  times. 
The  crafty  apostles  had  caught  the  old 
political  parties  with  guile.  It  is  evident, 
from  the  events  of  later  years,  that  it 
never  had  been  the  intention  to  abandon 
polygamy — that  it  was  not  even  suspend- 
ed, as  they  professed;  but  that  old  poly- 
gamous relations  were  continued,  and  new 
ones  clandestinely  formed,  as  before. 
Utah  is  a  state,  and  the  Mormon  Senator, 
Reed  Smoot,  is  one  of  the  most  powerful 
machine  leaders  at  Washington.  He  is 
one  of  the  ablest  of  the  old-school  politi- 
cians, and  his  influence  at  home  may  be 
measured  by  the  fact  that  he  was  able  to 
carry  Utah  for  Taft  in  the  election  of  191 1!, 
when  Taft  secured  only  eight  electoral 
votes  out  of  531  in  all  the  states  of  the 
Union . 


92  MORMON    SAINTS 


CHAPTER  XI 

Acts  of  the  Apostles 

The  Mormons  are  the  Moravians  of 
America,  by  their  missionary  zeal  and  he- 
roic sacrifice.  This  has  been  the  chief 
secret  of  their  marvelous  success  and  of 
the  rapid  spread  of  their  doctrines.  Two 
apostles,  Hyde  and  Kimball,  were  sent 
forth  as  early  as  1837,  and  within  three 
years  counted  over  four  thousand  con- 
verts in  Christian  England.  For  over 
half  a  century  there  went  forth  on  an  av- 
erage a  hundred  missionaries  annually; 
to-day  more  than  three  hundred  set  out 
each  year  to  preach  the  latter-day  gospel, 
and  two  thousand  elders  are  busy  in  vari- 
ous fields.  Any  priest  is  liable  at  any 
moment  to  be  sent  anywhere  by  his 
superiors.  Obedience  is  the  cardinal  vir- 
tue. The  elder  so  commanded  goes  forth, 
and  must  even  provide  his  own  support 
until  the  contributions  of  his  converts 
maintain  him.  There  are  no  Mormon  mis- 
sionary debts! 

The  absolute  abnegation  of  self  which 
characterizes  these  men  is  well  illustrated 
by  a  story  told  of  Martin  Harris,  in  the 
early  days  of  the  church.  He  pestered 


ACTS  OF  THE  APOSTLES  93 

a  man  to  purchase  a  copy  of  the  Book  of 
Mormon,  till  the  man  angrily  struck  him  a 
blow  in  the  face.  Instantly  Harris  turned 
the  other  cheek,  and  at  the  same  time 
opened  the  book  in  his  hand  at  the  page 
where  Smith's  garbled  version  of  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  enjoins  this  attitude  in 
persecution.  Such  incidents  could  not 
fail  of  making  deep  impressions. 

The  second  reason  of  their  success, 
given  missionary  fervor  and  fanatical  de- 
votion, is  found  in  the  recognition  of  their 
limitations.  They  soon  realized  that  it 
was  almost  useless  to  turn  to  the  intelli- 
gent or  the  well-to-do,  so  they  strove  to 
win  the  ignorant  and  lowly.  Men  they 
were  after,  not  money;  brawn,  not  brain; 
if  they  gained  these  things,  as  they  shrewd- 
ly foresaw,  the  others  would  be  added  unto 
them.  In  large  measure  it  was  a  process 
of  "natural  selection."  The  wealthy  and 
educated  classes  laughed  at  Mormon  pre- 
tensions and  were  not  dazzled  by  Mormon 
promises.  The  unlearned  readily  accept- 
ed the  new  revelation,  with  its  slavishly 
literal  interpretation  of  Scripture;  swal- 
lowed the  stories  of  Mormon  miracles,  and 
the  prophecies  of  the  world's  impending 
doom.  The  poor  snapped  greedily  at  the 
bait  of  the  Mormon  paradise,  where  want 
was  unknown,  and  fabulous  wealth  would 
soon  abound,  and  the  Lord  rained  manna 


94  MORMON    SAINTS 

down  from  heaven.  The  claim  to  be  the 
"chosen  people"  of  the  Lord  also  had  its 
unfailing  fascination  for  religions  vanity. 

Others,  especially  in  foreign  lands, 
where  dissenters  from  state  churches  la- 
bored under  many  disabilities,  were  at- 
tracted by  glowing  protestations  of  liber- 
alism. "The  kingdom  of  God,"  declared 
one  effusion,  "consists  in  correct  princi- 
ples, and  it  mattereth  not  what  a  man's 
religious  faith  is — whether  he  be  a  Presby- 
terian or  a  Methodist,  or  a  Baptist,  or  a 
Latter  Day  Saint,  or  '  Mormon, '  or  a  Camp- 
bellite,  or  a  Catholic,  or  Episcopalian,  or 
Mahometan,  or  even  Pagan,  or  anything 
else.  If  he  will  bow  the  knee,  and  with  his 
tongue  confess  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ, 
and  will  support  good  and  wholesome  laws 
for  the  regulation  of  society,  we  hail  him  as 
a  brother,  and  will  stand  by  him  as  he 
stands  by  us  in  these  things;  for  every 
man's  faith  is  a  matter  between  his  own 
soul  and  his  God  alone."  With  such  ut- 
terances the  down-trodden,  the  illiterate, 
the  discontented  of  foreign  countries  were 
attracted  to  "the  land  flowing  with  milk 
and  honey."  The  Perpetual  Emigration 
Fund  procured  their  passage  across  the 
ocean,  and,  once  at  the  seat  of  Mormon 
power,  they  were  speedily  reconciled  to 
the  peculiar  doctrines  of  the  Saints. 

The  Mormons  saw  that  immigration  was 


ACTS  OF  THE  APOSTLES  95 

a  blessing  to  be  desired,  not  a  curse  to  be 
turned  aside,  as  demagogues  and  deluded 
labor  leaders  stigmatize  it.  This  pre- 
empting of  immigration  was  one  of  the 
shrewdest  features  of  Mormon  propagan- 
da. They  did  not  send  evangelists  into 
city  slums  and  rural  settlements  after  the 
strangers  had  imbibed  the  air  of  freedom. 
They  did  not  lie  in  wait  for  the  immi- 
grants at  Castle  Garden,  like  other  sects. 
They  sent  their  preachers  to  foreign 
shores,  to  preach  Mormonism  and  Ameri- 
ca, till  converts  by  thousands  soon  crossed 
the  seas.  Over  thirty  thousand  had  been 
won  in  England  alone  in  the  first  twenty 
years  of  their  activity.  They  carried 
their  gospel  to  Malta,  to  South  Africa,  to 
India,  to  the  Sandwich  Islands. 

The  methods  of  the  early  missionaries 
were  much  like  those  of  the  Salvation 
Army  to-day.  Beating  drums,  blowing- 
trumpets,  chanting  hymns  for  which  they 
had  appropriated  catchy  popular  tunes, 
they  gathered  audiences  upon  the  high- 
ways and  byways,  and  harangued  them, 
the  Book  of  Mormon  in  hand.  Being 
American  farmers  and  artisans,  the  apos- 
tles were  mostly  fine  specimens  of  man- 
hood, which  gave  them  added  standing 
among  the  degenerate  populations  of  Eu- 
rope. Jules  Verne,  who  doubtless  ad- 
mired in  Joseph  Smith  a  kindred  genius, 


96  MORMON    SAINTS 

bears  witness  to  this  in  Une  Ville  Flot- 
tante:  "  'Who  is  yon  tall  man  of  haughty 
mien?'  I  asked.  *  He  is  a  Mormon/  was 
the  Doctor's  reply.  'One  of  their  elders, 
a  great  preacher  in  the  city  of  the  Saints. 
What  a  splendid  type  of  manhood !  Look 
at  his  proud  eye,  his  noble  countenance, 
his  dignified  carriage!'  That  man  was 
Abram  Hatch. 

Here  we  have  the  whole  Mormon  mis- 
sionary scheme.  They  are  pursuing  the 
same  tactics  to-day,  toned  down  to  suit 
the  times.  They  are  proceeding  more 
cautiously,  but  no  less  determinedly. 
Though  they  sometimes  attack  the  cita- 
dels of  culture — Congressman  Brigham  H. 
Roberts  was  the  church's  representative 
at  the  World's  Congress  of  Religions  in 
Chicago — their  preference  is  for  the  more 
primitive  communities  of  the  West,  the 
Northwest,  and  the  South.  Paul's  motto — 
"This  one  thing  I  do" — they  have  ever  in 
mind.  All  the  eloquence  of  fanaticism  is 
concentrated  upon  the  task  of  spreading 
their  doctrine.  Wily  and  smooth-spoken, 
with  plausible  reasonings  and  ingenious 
inventions,  they  soon  put  to  rout  the  mea- 
ger theological  learning  of  their  victims. 

The  astute  Mormon  apologist  is  able  to 
silence  his  critics  by  pointing  to  the  vag- 
aries and  superstitions  of  others  that  pro- 
fess to  be  more  enlightened.  To  the 


ACTS  OF  THE  APOSTLES  97 

Methodist  he  would  say,  "Was  not  John 
Wesley's  lame  horse  cured  by  faith?" 
The  Lutheran  he  would  ask,  "Did  not  the 
founder  of  your  faith  throw  an  ink-pot  at 
the  Devil  ?"  Coming  down  to  our  own 
times,  he  would  inquire,  "Did  not  Father 
Ignatius  and  seven  others  see  the  Virgin 
Mary  on  the  meadow  of  Llanthony  Abbey, 
on  September  15,  1880  ?"  And  does  not 
Mrs.  Stetson,  once  leader  of  the  Christian 
Scientists  in  New  York  City,  confidently 
await  the  resurrection  of  Mrs.  Eddy — "it 
may  be  to-day;  it  may  be  next  week"? 
Pointing  to  such  phenomena,  the  astute 
Mormon  apologist  insists  that  his  faith 
imposes  no  greater  tax  upon  human  credu- 
lity than  theirs . 

Not  only  are  the  missionaries  armed 
with  such  edged  arguments,  they  are  often 
proficient  in  other  arts  that  win  favorable 
opinions  for  them — along  with  cash  for 
their  maintenance.  When  Elder  George 
J.  Adams,  who  was  an  actor,  was  sent  to 
convert  Philadelphia,  on  arriving  there  he 
played  Richard  III  for  a  week  to  raise  a 
missionary  fund.  He  made  Shakespeare 
an  advance  agent  for  Joe  Smith . 

Knowing  the  opposition  they  are  likely 
to  encounter,  the  Saints  seek  to  establish 
themselves  in  a  community,  and  ingratiate 
themselves  at  the  firesides  of  the  people, 
before  their  character  and  mission  become 

BANCROFT 

LIBRARY 


98  MORMON    SAINTS 

known.  Not  until  they  are  sure  of  their 
victims  is  the  mask  removed.  Whole 
families  are  gained  over  in  this  way  be- 
fore they  know  it  is  Mormonism  that  is 
weaving  its  meshes  about  them.  When 
they  learn  it,  the  poison  has  done  its  work ; 
their  minds  are  saturated  with  subtle  so- 
phistries, and  no  reasoning  can  prevail. 

This  indefatigable  activity,  supplement- 
ed by  the  missionary  literature  sent  broad- 
cast, is  bound  to  tell  in  the  end.  The 
church  does  not  endeavor  to  displace 
Christianity,  but  to  supplement  and  com- 
plete it.  This  veils  suspicion;  the  seed  of 
doctrine  once  sown,  no  opposition  can  root 
it  out  of  simple  minds,  but  rather  tends  to 
establish  and  strengthen  it. 

If  they  are  persecuted,  the  missionaries 
bear  it  with  resignation,  and  so  deepen  the 
impression  they  have  made.  Every  elder 
beaten  and  tarred  and  feathered  is  an  ar- 
gument in  favor  of  the  church  for  which 
he  suffers  indignity. 


WHAT  WILL  BE  THE  END  99 


CHAPTER  XII 


What  Will  be  the  End? 

President  Wilford  Woodruff  died  in 
1898,  and  was  succeeded  by  Lorenzo  Snow. 
He  died  in  1901,  and  was  succeeded  by 
Joseph  F.  Smith,  nephew  of  the  Prophet. 
This  last  of  the  tribe  died  in  November, 
1918,  and  the  present  head  of  the  Saints  is 
Heber  Jedediah  Grant . 

The  church  has  prospered  greatly  in 
these  latter  days.  Its  four  grand  temples 
cost  over  six  million  dollars  to  build.  Its 
Tabernacle,  comfortably  seating  7,000 
people,  with  a  remarkable  organ  and 
choir,  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  great 
West.  To  the  faithful,  these  are  signs  of 
the  divine  favor.  God  must  look  upon  the 
Mormons  as  his  beloved  children,  or  he 
would  not  bless  them  so  abundantly. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  practice  of 
polygamy  was  clandestinely  resumed,  if 
ever  it  had  been  suspended.  The  church 
is  active  in  politics,  if  ever  it  was  quies- 
cent, even  going  so  far  as  to  dictate  which 
of  its  members  shall  be  Democrats,  which 
Republicans.  Being  a  sovereign  state, 
Utah  is  governed  by  its  own  citizens ;  and 
these  are  overwhelmingly  Mormon,  while 


100  MORMON    SAINTS 

even  the  Gentile  elements  largely  sympa- 
thize with  them.  The  church  practically 
rules  the  state.  True,  Utah  was  admitted 
under  the  provisions  of  an  enabling  act 
forever  prohibiting  plural  marriages ;  am- 
nesty was  extended  to  the  polygamous 
Saints  only  upon  condition  of  their  dis- 
solving illicit  relations — but  these  provi- 
sions were  disregarded,  that  condition  was 
not  observed.  True,  the  constitution  of 
Utah  itself  forbids  polygamy — but  laws, 
to  be  effective,  must  be  enforced.  Joseph 
F .  Smith,  the  last  president  of  the  church, 
left  five  widows  when  he  died,  and  was  the 
father  of  43  children.  Heber  J.  Grant, 
the  present  head,  married  three  wives. 
There  has  been  no  reason  for  any  change  in 
the  Mormon  attitude  toward  polygamy  ex- 
cept political  strategy.  What  is  to  be 
done? 

The  question  came  before  the  people  in 
1899  in  a  form  which  demanded  an  im- 
mediate answer.  The  people  of  Utah 
elected  Brigham  H.  Eoberts  to  Congress, 
despite  the  storm  of  protest  arising  from 
all  parts  of  the  country.  He  was  a  con- 
fessed polygamist,  a  defender  of  that  in- 
stitution, and  his  campaign  was  conducted 
upon  this  issue.  The  question  was  di- 
rectly put  to  Utah :  Will  you  condone  and 
approve  polygamy!  The  answer  was 
Roberts 's  election  by  a  majority  of  six 


WHAT  WILL  BE  THE   END  101 

thousand,  but  Congress  declared  his  seat 
vacant;  again  the  Saints  had  reckoned 
without  their  host. 

The  fantastic  accounts  of  Anti-Mormon 
Apostles,  like  the  tales  of  " escaped  nuns" 
about  Catholic  convents,  need  not  be  taken 
too  seriously.  There  are  people  who  de- 
light in  being  thrilled  with  horror,  and 
such  lecturers  cater  to  that  craving.  Facts 
open  to  the  light  of  day  are  quite  suffi- 
cient to  convince  rational  men  that  Mor- 
monism  is  not  an  illuminating  factor  in 
American  life  nor  a  purifying  influence  in 
American  politics.  But  to  tar  and  feather 
Mormon  missionaries  is  a  confession  by 
rival  sectarians  that  they  are  feared — a 
confession  neither  in  accordance  with  firm 
faith  nor  Christian  charity.  To  every 
creed  must  be  granted  the  right  to  be 
heard — truth  is  impregnable. 

The  Mormon  propaganda  can  be  coun- 
teracted only  by  a  campaign  of  education. 
To  spread  far  and  wide  the  facts  as  to  its 
origin,  to  expose  the  dubious  character  of 
its  founders  and  the  absurdity  of  its  doc- 
trines, to  show  its  radical  antagonism  to 
modern  institutions — this  is  the  only 
course  that  will  prevail.  There  has  been 
too  much  ignorant  denunciation,  too  much 
aggressive  malevolence  in  the  past. 
These  have  always  reacted  in  favor  of 
Mormonism. 


102  MORMON    SAINTS 

Most  important  of  all  would  be  the  po- 
litical redemption  of  Utah.  This,  it  would 
seem,  could  be  accomplished  by  encourag- 
ing the  influx  of  Gentile  population — by 
guiding  thither  educated  immigrants  from 
foreign  shores  and  homeseekers  of  our 
own  land.  In  the  course  of  two  decades 
the  Mormon  ascendancy  would  be  de- 
stroyed; existing  laws,  which  are  ample, 
could  be  enforced;  and  the  great  octopus, 
shorn  of  its  political  power,  would  be 
obliged  to  assume  its  proper  station 
among  the  ranting  sects  that  come  and  go 
and  are  forgotten — dead  sea  fruit  of  ashes, 
which  reason  at  last  will  scatter  to  the 
winds. 

Mormonism  supplies  an  instructive  ob- 
ject lesson  for  the  lay  student  of  Compara- 
tive Eeligion.  It  shows  how  easily  a  new 
religion  can  be  launched — and  new  reli- 
gions are  still  being  launched,  as  witness 
Koreshanity,  the  Mazdaznan,  and  others 
even  more  popular  and  hardly  less  fantas- 
tic. Of  the  human  species  perhaps  not 
more  than  five  per  cent,  are  able  to  think. 
The  vast  majority  only  think  they  think. 
Ninety-five  per  cent  are  sheep,  following 
some  leader,  bowing  down  to  some  idol, 
greedily  swallowing  the  predigested  men- 
tal food  prepared  for  them  by  pastors, 
politicians,  professors,  and  the  press,  four 
P's  in  one  pod.  Education  does  not  help 


WHAT  WILL  BE  THE  END  103 

very  much,  as  an  educated  fool  is  wiser 
only  in  his  own  conceit.  What  may  be 
called  "the  newspaper  mind"  in  our  day, 
an  unconscious  reverence  for  the  printed 
word,  animates  the  vast  mob  that  runs 
after  every  new  folly ;  in  a  few  years  even 
the  exertion  of  reading  the  daily  journals 
may  be  too  much  for  intellects  fed  upon 
moving-picture  films.  If  that  is  true  of 
our  age,  it  need  not  surprise  any  one  that 
Mormonism  won  its  way  easily  a  century 
ago,  nor  that  the  pathway  of  the  human 
race,  from  the  prehistoric  mists  through 
all  the  centuries  of  progress,  is  strewn  with 
husks  of  fallen  creeds  and  bleaching  bones 
of  dead  faiths. 


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